Fair Harvard

In 1836, Rev. Samuel Gilman, Class of 1811, had written his most famous hymn in honor of his alma mater’s 200th birthday. “Fair Harvard” would eventually become the melody sung at commencement and the centerpiece of a large and impressive collection of Harvard-inspired tunes. But, in 1994, 136 years after his death, the most famous lyrical change came to pass on Gilman’s original work. Fair Harvard now had “daughters” as well as “sons” and for then-President Neil L. Rudenstine and Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles, it was about time the music caught up with reality.

Now before you wince in pain and cry out that we have already been through this, spent years agonizing over “Fair Harvard’s” most controversial lyrical change, rest assured: This is not a chauvinist attempt to restore the patriarchal language of our dear hymn. I simply want to suggest correcting one glaring, but easily fixed grammatical and connotative mistake in one of our University’s most cherished traditions.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the history of “Fair Harvard”, Gilman’s 172-year-old hymn began with the phrase “Fair Harvard! Thy sons to thy jubilee throng!” Obviously, there is a gender-insensitive term there which prompted Kendric Packer ’48, to propose a contest to Harvard alums to provide a fitting alternative. Simply replacing “sons” with “children” had a belittling connotation and afforded one two many syllables to keep pace with the old Irish tune on which “Fair Harvard” is based. So, after four years of discussions and vigorous debate in alumni journals, the greater Harvard community settled on the new opening verse: “Fair Harvard! We join in thy jubilee throng.” They got it wrong.

Let me explain. “Fair Harvard” is a delightful hymn describing the excitement of Commencement day. The original language (“thy sons to thy jubilee throng”) indicates that students, admittedly male students, are “thronging” to the “jubilee” of Harvard graduation. The easiest reading of the new verse presents an obvious grammatical problem: “We join in thy jubilee throng,” is essentially saying “we come together at your jubilee.” This complete statement then leaves a lonely verb, “throng,” at the end of the verse: “We join in thy jubilee. [complete sentence, then…] ‘throng.’”

Well-meaning critics may propose that there is no grammatical problem and the new verse’s object is in fact “throng” rather than “jubilee.” If this is true, these critics only have succeeded in crafting a grammatically correct, but awkward sentence as they change “throng” from a verb to a noun. I am not exactly sure what a “jubilee throng” is, jubilee being the adjective apparently, but I am sure they can convolute some meaning into the phrase if they needed to try that hard.

However, beyond this grammatical component lies the more general offense: a lack of artistic integrity. When altering any work of art, it is essential to keep to the original work and meaning of the artist as intact as possible. When the Vatican fully renovated the Sistine Chapel (incidentally, also in 1994), it made extremely conservative and meticulous decisions to stay true to the original intentions of Michelangelo’s ceilinged masterpieces. The 1994 revision of “Fair Harvard,” however, completely departed from Gilman’s original meaning. It seemed that the fair alums of Harvard were so anxious to adopt a politically correct alternative to the first verse that they overlooked the artistic integrity of the piece as a whole.

Gilman’s original intention was to describe the grandiose nature of Commencement day, a jubilee towards which many a nervous student and proud parent throng. Any surveyor of the Yard on Commencement day would clearly realize that “throng” is a much more appropriate verb to describe the great masses crowding in for the historic ceremony. “Join” is a word more appropriate for the purchase of an online dating membership. When I graduate, I don’t want to merely “join” my classmates; with my brothers and sisters of Harvard and our proud faculty and parents, I want to “throng” to our great jubilee in historic Tercentenary Theatre.

The true crime is that the 1994 revision changes the syntax, meaning, and feel of the first verse rather than keeping the original meaning as intact as possible. “We join in thy jubilee throng” succeeds at being both undramatic and unpoetic. If we must revise our history, I believe a much more humble approach to Gilman’s great work would be to simply replace the two words “thy sons” with “we all.” This changes nothing grammatically or syntactically and maintains the original intention of Gilman to produce an image of a rushing and thronging sea of people towards Commencement rather than a joining gaggle.

I have contacted the President, Deans and Marshall of Harvard University with the hopes that we can change this unfortunate error. Bureaucracy will obviously take its time, so for now there is little we can do. But when we seniors graduate this June, I hope you will “join” me in bellowing out these words that are both gender-sensitive and true to the original meaning: “We all to thy jubilee throng!”


Brian S. Gillis ’08 is a government concentrator in Adams House.