NEW FACTS FOR OLD

One of the most fascinating aspects of life at Harvard is its elusiveness. One may live within the confines of the University and the parietal regulations for years without really knowing the students, the professors or the well-worn grooves in which they both conduct their separate existences. Just when one begins to think he knows something about the place, along comes a trivial incident to upset his conceit and make him marvel anew as on the first day of his arrival in Cambridge.

It is especially disconcerting when a new flood of light is thrown upon the mystories of University administration--not from within, to be sure--but from some obscure outpost of civilization, such as Mansfield, Ohio. The Mansfield High School paper. The Hyphonerian, full of the praiseworthy ambition to acquaint its students with the best that is known and thought in the world, conceived the idea of publishing short biographical and descriptive notes upon the leading universities, "especially in Ohio". Harvard is accorded a prominent place. Among details more or less known to Harvard men, though new to young Ohionese, the following sentences stand out in peculiar contrast since they are instructive to the former as well as to the latter:

"Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. This school itself is for men only, but Radcliffe, an adjoining school for girls, employs some of Harvard's professors.... Harvard's specialty is Landscape Architecture".

After this clear statement, the bizarre and ill understood relations of Harvard and Radcliffe will no more battle the imagination. The "adjoining school for girls" simply employs and enjoys some of "this school's" professors. A simple and understandable commercial relation, that is all.

As for Harvard's specialty, the nouveau riche Business School can no longer contend with the patrician. Law School for this honor. It belongs to neither of them. Now that the fact is established, it seems strange no one had thought of Landscape Architecture before. Bald headed barbers have always been the leading authorities on how to keep the chevelure long and dlustrous. In like manner bachelors and spinsters are the leading lights upon the care and feeding of infants. So too, the School, or Department, or Course--whichever it is--of Landscape Architecture is Harvard's specialty, as the beauty and harmony, not only of the Yard, but of all the surrounding territory will testify.