Bye-Bye to the Bystander...

Harvard students, unless they’re participating in a psychology study, rarely just stand around and watch people. Ever-brimming with drive and determination, most of us are always on the move, whether it’s “On to the next study group!” or “On to the next hole in Leverett House senior golf!” Everything is always happening, right now.

I, however, believe you can learn a lot from idle observation, in addition to laughing at those who pick their noses. That’s what I have tried to do with this column this year: faithfully document the words and actions of my peers with the utmost in journalistic exactitude. “The Bystander” is an objective, balanced, wholly veracious account of the many facets of life at Harvard College. It is a comprehensive portrait, and a deeply insightful one at that.

One thing I have learned during my field work is that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US, with not one exception, takes himself or herself a bit too seriously. Better to take the long view, and dig beneath the surface of careful annunciation and polished rhetoric. You will quickly discover that the musings of our classmates are often by turns pretentious, frivolous, and absurd.

Take Maya D. Simpson ’11, for example. Despite her forceful (if indeterminate) advocacy of radical change and membership in numerous campus activist groups, her strong analytic skills and 3.8 GPA destine her for work at Morgan Stanley. She shows up at six every morning, never telling her coworkers that she continues to wear hemp underwear and vote Democrat. Maya retires at age 52 to found her long-envisioned development NGO / feminist book club, but only after 30 years of exploiting cheap foreign labor and throwing toxic waste into rivers just for fun.

Or how about Steven A. Franklin ’10? He always said he wanted to make Harvard a fun place “for the rest of us.” But guess what? After an extremely successful punch season, Steven joins the A.D. Club, ditching his old roommates for a sweet off-campus apartment. He decides that he can never live in his hometown of Indianapolis again, deeming Indy “too unsophisticated for my bicoastal sensibilities.” He also learns how to dance, well.

As always, Bennett C. Braddock III ’08 offers a vision of redemption. Although his religious sentiments as an undergraduate could be summed up by the sentence “I’m drunker than Jesus right now,” after five years at the College Bennett finally earns his degree: in Buddhist philosophy. Now a renowned scholar and a forceful advocate for human rights in Tibet, Braddock leads a life of worldly asceticism and material self-denial. He still occasionally indulges in women’s sporting events, however.

As for me? Well… um… let’s see… for that answer, you’ll have to stand by….