Help Me, Rick Santorum

Like many of my fellow Harvard students, I have been appalled by several of your recent deeply misinformed comments about liberal arts colleges. In January, for example, you accused President Obama of encouraging kids to attend college because the “indoctrination that occurs in American universities” is how the left holds power in America. You said that Obama’s push for higher education is nothing more than an attempt for the president to “remake” our nation’s youth in his own image. You’ve painted a nightmarish picture of our American universities as “indoctrination mills” run by liberal professors, plagued by an atheistic spirit where students lose their religion due to “politically correct left” professors.

I am writing to tell you that these claims are wild, ignorant exaggerations. Over the course of my few years at Harvard, I have come to discover a wonderful, vibrant campus that values freedom of expression and diverse viewpoints. We are taught to think independently here at Harvard, rather than simply to follow the herd. Heck, our introduction to economics class is even taught by a former advisor to President George W. Bush! Furthermore, contrary to your claim that colleges are bastions of anti-religious sentiment, the center of our campus is the austere and awe-inspiring Memorial Church, which emphasizes the profound contribution of religion to the fabric of the Harvard community.

And furthermore…um…and furthermore…

(…Are they gone? I think they’re gone. Oh, thank God.)

Rick, you’ve got to help me. Everything you’ve been saying about liberal indoctrination? The godlessness? It’s true—all of it. Don’t believe anything they tell you—Harvard’s been keeping me trapped here and brainwashing me.

Oh, sure, everything started off great. Then there were the little things. Like the time that my resident dean caught me reading the Bible and gave me a copy of “Rules for Radicals” instead. Or the time my tutor saw me reading an article from Fox News on my laptop and proceeded to smash my computer while berating me for not remembering that “Red is the new Crimson.” You know, nothing major. I was told to expect college life to be a bit different than high school, so I thought nothing of it.

But then they started mandating these University-wide 7 a.m. salutes to Obama, and Rick, that’s when I really started getting suspicious. Now every day they make us stand outside in the cold now wearing these brown shirts and make us say these meaningless phrases over and over again. “False consciousness.” “Poststructuralism.” “Universal Health Care.” All nonsense. I don’t know how much longer I can take this.

Oh, sure, Harvard’s apologists like to tell people that a church sits at the center of its campus. But have you ever been inside Memorial Church, Rick? All the crucifixes are upside down and there’s a shrine to some guy named Baal at the front of the room. All likenesses of Jesus have been plastered over with photos of Howard Zinn. Hell, I only manage to get exempted from the weekly orgies (also known as “Sunday Services”) because I have asthma problems.

I haven’t eaten real food in months. They don’t allow meat anywhere on this campus. If you so much as bring a piece of chicken within a fifty-foot radius of a Harvard building, they lock you in a human-sized cage and poke you with a stick. “How do you like it, huh?” they say as they poke you. “How do you like it?” I can’t eat any more hemp cereal, Rick, and I’m sick of these vegan turkey legs, too—these people are trying to kill me.  

So they bring up Greg Mankiw? Have you ever actually opened Mankiw’s textbook, Rick? It’s, like, six pages of supply-and-demand charts and the rest is plagiarized directly from the original German version of Das Kapital. It’s a farce, Mr. Santorum. If you even utter the phrase “regressive tax” at Harvard, the administration grabs you and throws you into a cellar underneath Lamont where you’re forced to watch a Paul R. Krugman video on repeat for days on end while Occupy Harvard protesters throw tomatoes at you. Now my friend can’t even say the words “supply-side economics” without vomiting.

I need to wrap this letter up quickly—there’s smoke in my eyes from the Yard bonfire where all the students are burning their draft cards (there isn’t even a draft right now, Rick! What the hell are they burning?!). But this is a desperate plea for help, Mr. Santorum. I need you and all of your supporters to help beat Mitt Romney and take down Obama so that we can stop this madness. Together, we can reclaim liberal arts colleges for the sane few of us remaining in this country. Fight the power! Take back the campus! We are the 99 percent! We are the 99 percent! We are the 99 percent!

Oh, dear God. It’s…starting…already…

Avishai D. Don ’12, a Crimson editorial writer, is a social studies concentrator in Adams House. His column appears on alternate Thursdays. He wishes all of his readers a freilichen Purim.