Extracurricular Activities and Professionalism

No aspect of Harvard College is perhaps more celebrated than its vaunted tradition of undergraduate freedom. Yet where once Harvard's sons would express their freedom by loosing cows in the chapel and rioting on Cambridge Common, Harvard's undergraduates today have more creative outlets for enthusiasm that lack none of their old vigor.

Currently there are 85 recognized college-wide organizations at Harvard, including as members more than half the undergraduate community. Some--like the language clubs and the casual hobby groups--do little more than provide an opportunity for individuals to pool their common interests. Others--the student publications and drama groups, for example--pose some sizable problems for the educator through their burgeoning competence and professional skill.

Finding the Focus

These latter organizations furnish their membership with an important part of their individual educational experiences at Harvard, even to the frequent point of exceeding academics in their claim on time and enthusiasm. Meanwhile, they are making valuable contributions toward the richness and diversity of the entire student body. Yet as these groups grow in their own traditions, the University will be increasingly challenged as the real focus of student loyalties.

Within the brief span of ten days last spring, for example, Harvard undergraduates produced nine fulllength dramatic performances, ranging in difficulty from a Broadway musical to a Greek tragedy, in Greek. At the same time, teams of CRIMSON editors were gathering information in the South for a twelve-page feature survey of university racial integration. WHRB was already readying its transmitters for adaptation to frequency modulation, the Debate Council had four teams travelling through the mid-west, and forty-five singers of the Glee Club were in rehearsal for an eight week summer concert tour of Europe.

This pageant of intense undergraduate activity has developed to clash with the older traditions of Harvard--the quiet that lingers in the Yard and the contemplative detachment of "Tory Row." And there is evidence that the leisurely quest for the constructive relaxation of extra-curricular activities has been transformed into an intense drive for the kind of competence that has always been held more characteristic of "the business world."

Yet this intensity in undergraduate activities seems to be only the function of a larger area of seriousness at Harvard in which the student looks on his college career with much more gravity than did his father. The prospect of these shifting values and patterns of life in undergraduate outlook is one that fills alternate observers with anguish and satisfaction.

Even Football Is Better

The issue was stated clearly in a recent speech to an Alumni group by Dean Bundy. "I think the average college man," he said, "works harder than we did.... I think there is a tendency also to be more nearly professional in the approach to particular extra-curricular interests. The CRIMSON is better than it used to be -- I even think our present football teams would beat yours, if we could somehow match them across the years. A similar concern for near-professional standards is evident in activities as widely different as the Hasty Pudding show and the Latin Oration at Commencement," he said.

The Pudding annually hires a professional director and choreographer, and the Glee Club, orchestra, and band all have full-time leadership. But in the Harvard Dramatic Club, which last year produced 19 productions within four months, the Debate Council, which boasts an 81 per cent record of victories, and the CRIMSON, where faculty advising is a mere lingering formality, the goals are set and attained by inner criticism and pressure.

A Success Story

The most apparent transformation has taken place within the Harvard Dramatic Club, which three years ago was demoralized and near insolvency. Now, however, the HDC has generated a University-wide renascence of quality and vigor in drama. No more than six or seven members of this central group intend theatre careers, but their productions have already achieved occasional brilliance--by any professional standard.

For many of the more active groups, there appears to be a constant attempt to impose the highest outside standards of excellence on the work of student organizations. Much of this drive for perfection is due, no doubt, to the expanding imaginations of the group leaders, who, in writing and in drama for example, turn to the Times and Broadway for their standards. And the tendency is furthered still by the critical student community that tends to judge College drama and original writing not as articles for indulgence but as productions that must measure up competitively to the work of real professionals.

Energy Unlimited

Given the reservoirs of undeveloped skills that continually reside in the College community, the bounds of student enthusiasm are virtually limitless. WHRB goes on a 700-hour broadcasting orgy, the HDC produces some of the most difficult plays obtainable, and the Glee Club sings concerts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Tighter organization and planning, constant self-criticism, and allocation of the requisite time and energy can produce virtually any desired end.

The decision, therefore, is crucial, when an individual decides to involve himself with one of these attractive activities. The drives that lead to participation differ among