BORED INACCESSIBLES

Recently an assistant in a large Comparative Literature course complacently remarked that he made himself as inaccessible as possible by posting no office hours except after classes and by refusing to allow a telephone in his lodgings. This man draws his salary from the Corporation for no other duties than correcting examination papers and advising students. His remark is evidence that he is in the wrong profession; his philosophy of teaching is all wrong. He is evading his duty. He is not a good teacher and never will be, if his remark is an accurate comment on his attitude toward his job. Harvard is not interested in aesthetic young men who revel in the intellectual atmosphere that pervades these cloistered walls, sipping their tea and sweet cocktails while drawing salaries to be of service to slightly younger men, who, perhaps, don't like sweet cocktails nor even intellectual atmosphere, but who, nevertheless, pay their tuition for assistance in educating themselves.

When college rules demand signatures, and that natural feeling of imperfection that resides in youth demands official consultation on important academic problems, the student is confronted with the insuperable barrier that the vaunted inaccessibility of such men presents. It is only natural that men concerned with administrative problems must plot their time judiciously and can allow only small amounts of it to the students, but faculty members whose primary duties are teaching have no excuse for hiding. If the personal popularity of our young instructors is so overwhelming that they have no privacy, they might resort to eating onions to reduce the number of their callers.

It is high time that these inaccessible assistants realize that their jobs are to assist. What though they be bored with oft-repeated questions and that ignorance of a narrow field which naturally arises from an intellect whose interests are necessarily broader? They are paid to overcome this distasteful boredom. Such irritations are the crosses which men who adopt this troublesome profession have to bear. An assistant is not earning his salary unless he goes out of his way to make himself as accessible to the students as he possibly can, even to the extent of sacrificing part of his social life to pay the exorbitant price of a telephone.