Harvard's 'Love Story'

Halfway through the overcomplicated setup we’d devised for an iPod giveaway during the a capella jam, Pierpaolo Barbieri ’09 pulled a white box from his jacket pocket. “What a coincidence! I happen to have a brand new iPod nano right here!”

“You know what I think we should do with it? I think we should give it to a member of the Harvard class of 2011!” The audience that packed Sanders Theater drowned out my last few syllables with screams, whoops and hollers, so loud I almost took a step back. Really? Just because I said your class year? I can’t imagine any situation when shouting “2008” would draw that kind of reaction from my classmates. And it wasn’t just class pride: during the Crimson Key Society’s screening of “Love Story,” the sight of Weld Hall drew cheers from a few and boos from the rest. The mere mention of the word “Canaday” was enough to send a section of any freshman gathering into a frenzy, and the only time you’ll hear Harvard students boo Yale like the class of 2011 did this week is during The Game.

It’s easy to laugh at freshmen for their enthusiasm. After all, they haven’t even spent two weeks at Harvard. They don’t know that people don’t wear Harvard t-shirts unless they got them for free, that our rivalry with Yale is more a once-a-year event than a way of life, and that upperclassmen find overt displays of excitement confusing, not contagious. But what does it mean that the people who know Harvard the least seem to love it the best? One can counter by arguing that the senior’s love for Harvard is more restrained and more refined, better allowing him or her to appreciate Harvard on its own terms. Harvard love isn’t the cheering, yelling kind of love: it’s more subtle than that, because we’re more subtle ourselves than our friends in New Haven or Palo Alto or Ann Arbor.

But I can’t shake the feeling that this is a cop-out. There’s a difference between enjoying a place like Harvard and really loving it with the kind of love that would make 1,000 people cheer at the sound of “2011.”

Decked out in Crimson Key red on freshman move-in day, I get to be part of that enthusiasm. Most freshmen grin from ear to ear when I say “Welcome to Harvard,” and why shouldn’t they? Their very presence on campus comes at the end of years of hard work and anticipation, and signals the beginning of years more of promise and excitement. They’re thrilled just to be here, and so they cheer all week long at things that upperclassmen find passe.

I’m not writing this to say, “What the hell is wrong with you, upperclassmen, that you can’t be like the freshmen?” Because the freshmen won’t be like freshmen for very long. In a few months they’ll be Harvard students like everyone else, and many will gain a cynicism and sarcasm about Harvard and themselves that wasn’t present before. But recently, events have been reminding me that I am, indeed, a senior: I’ve spell-checked my name as it will appear on my diploma, and I’ve been photographed for a yearbook I barely knew existed. I’ll never get another chance to put on a bright red shirt, welcome Harvard first years, and for one week get caught up in their enthusiasm and excitement. Every year, memories of the Elm Yard safety talk in September 2004—when the mere mention of Canaday sent my entryway into hysterics—will fade, with no new freshmen to prompt those memories of my own freshman year.

And this makes me sad, because I really do love this place. For me, it’s not just Annenberg, or the sweep of the New Yard, or all the other obvious things to love about Harvard. What really gets me are the subtleties that I didn’t notice for a few years. I love the look on the soldiers’ faces in “The Coming of the Americans” in Widener, and how fresh the air around the Quad smells during the fall, and how Harvard Square has so many amazing bookstores. And of course, I love the people, my professors and friends and roommates, who have made my Harvard experience what it is. But it bothers me that I can only express my love for this place with the excitement it deserves when I’m interacting with freshmen. And thus, it makes me sadder to think that my last Freshman Week, three years after my first, has come to an end.

Again, this isn’t a plea for vocal Harvard enthusiasm, or a real mascot, or a more full football stadium, though all of those things would be nice. Rather, I’d like to urge my fellow seniors (and probably you juniors and sophomores as well) to try to see Harvard like the freshmen do, as something that is exciting not just because it is new, but because it is amazing and worthy of excitement. But you’ll have to hurry, because before long, we’ll have made the class of 2011 just like the rest of us.

—M. Aidan Kelly ’08 is a History and Literature concentrator in Cabot House. He really likes freshmen—is that creepy?