LETTER: Less condescension for the Quad, please...

To the editors:

As an alum, former Pforzheimer House resident, and Crimed, I was disappointed by the condescending tone of your Apr. 26, 2010 editorial “Separate but not Equal.” Ten years after my graduation from Harvard, it’s sad to see that patronizing attitudes remain toward the Quad.

You lament the “inconvenience of living in the Quad” based on “the fastidious timing of schedules to match with shuttle times” and the fact that “Quad residents must spend 10 or so minutes traveling every time they want to go from their Houses to the Square or the Yard.” Oh, the humanity! Students at universities with truly far-flung campuses, like Arizona or Michigan, probably wouldn’t mind a 10-minute walk or shuttle ride to class. The same goes for commuter students at campuses like Bunker Hill and UMass-Boston. (Harvard has its own tradition of commuters, as described by the great alum Theodore H. White.) And when you’re commuting in the real world—riding the 1-9 from Washington Heights to Wall Street, say, or idling in five lanes of traffic in Los Angeles—a 10-minute commute would look ideal.

As I recall, Cabot, Currier, and Pforzheimer are not much farther away from the Yard and the Square than are Dunster and Mather. I also recall that the Quad dorms’ facilities compared quite favorably with those of River Houses like Leverett.

Quadlings, don’t sweat the commute. You’ve got beautiful backdrops of foliage in the fall and lilacs in the spring. And don’t sweat your classmates’ condescension. They’ll realize their errors soon enough.

RICHARD B. TENORIO ’00

Malden and Cambridge, Mass.

Apr. 27, 2010

Richard B. Tenorio ’00 lived in Pforzheimer House.