Harvard Indifference

The speech of Yale is quite alien. For instance, they call their yard a "campus." Heywood Broun '10.   "Some of My Best Friends Are Yale Men."

Our text for today is particularly applicable at this time, as it can serve as a double lesson. First, let it be an inspiration to the Class of '45, some of whom come from parts of the country where every college boasts of its campus and not of its yard. Second, let it act as a much-needed reminder to the three upper classes. Their members have of late years shown an alarming tendency to break away, either out of wilfulness or neglect, from the traditional moniker which the Harvard grounds have carried since the city was born as Newtowne three hundred years ago.

We were particularly reminded of this tragic situation by the remark of a friend made recently to the effect that a certain idea "was spreading all over the campus." To our remonstrances he replied that he was not referring to the Yard (which in September is full of Freshmen, not ideas), but to the House system.

This is a lame excuse. Because the University has spread beyond the original acre and a quarter of cowyard procured by Governor Winthrop in 1637 for "a schoale or colledge" is no reason for adopting a name totally alien to our way of life. The ex-swampland which is Eliot House and the far-off wilderness which is Dunster are no more descended from the Romans' Campus Martius than are the peaceful preserves of Hollis and Stoughton. Both sides of Mass. Ave. are equally consecrated to intellectual grazing, luminating, and chewing the cud.

Another departure from custom which would set John and his seventeenth century friends to revolving in their coffins is the reference to college as "school." Harvard's educational standards may have slipped in the past few years, but there is as yet no justification for confusing the undergraduate department of the University with an elementary institution. Let us remember that it is college which is opening this week, not school, and let us head for classes Wednesday with our voices raised, just slightly, in the traditional Harvard cry, "For God, for country, and for the unsplit infinitive."