Join the Crowd

GOING INTO the Freshman Union for reunion-week supplies, says one of the 25th reunion's hospitality chairmen, "is like going into the army. They give you towels, bags, hats, shirts, everything." And an army it is Over half the Class of 1958 invaded through the Union gates sometime Sunday for the annual attempt at fun and funds.

Red-bagged parking meters reserve entire street-lengths for the guests of honor and their families, aviating the Square's already skin-tight parking situation. The guests pulled up in Audis and Rabbits and taxis, cocktail glasses in hand, wearing anything from t-shirts and bermuda shorts to Calvin Klein pastel-striped sweaters to a full suit and tie. Their arms outstretched in the firm handshake mode they ran into everyone they expected or didn't expect in the first few moments and introduced them to glowing if harried wives and reticent if recalcitrant offspring.

"I remember when I saw you in a high chair," one little girl was told with the pinch of her cheek. "So what?" she demanded, pulling her color-coded class cap further down over her eyes.

They took hours to unload everything. At least one alumnus brought along a TV, apparently anticipating some dull moments in the action-packed schedule which lasts through post-Commencement hucksterism. But between carting the children to Walden Pond and the adults to prepaid boogies at the Metro, the smooth reunion organizers don't leave much room to reflect.

That hasn't stopped some from trying. One of the class's celebrities (a group which includes the Governor of West Virginia, who couldn't spare four days off), novelist Erich Segal says he finds Harvard selling a bit too hard. The Harvard of his novel Love Story. Segal says, "was fiction. It was Shangri-la This is trying to make that fiction a reality. We've all come here to believe that fiction. The object is to make you cry, like my book, but you know what the difference is? Love Story costs you two dollars and 50 cents, and this costs you a lot more."

Twenty thousand percent more, to be precise. At $449 per family, the returnees had better be well-entertained and fed. One woman, arriving at her dorm-to-be declared that she would not stay there if forced to share a john. Any undergraduate could have told her that's what dorm living is all about, but 25 years down the road, no one wants to be reminded how things really were. Those of us who stick around discover the charade we will one day be dazzled with, the Harvard of fiction.

ALL THE RED-CARPET treatment has, indeed an air of unreality. The campus and Square have been pulled into ship-shape like some last-minute dress rehearsal. Fences and scaffolds have disappeared, "green miracle" grass has been rolled or sprayed over barren wastes. "All that grass, just so people can sit on it," one current junior marvelled Even the expensive poster kiosks were stripped of their characteristic artwork and painted black.

The reunioners aren't oblivious to these doctorings. But they revel in them. "They did the same thing 25 years ago," said one. "They even painted concrete green. But the Yard is beautiful."

They also don't seem to mind reliving events that couldn't have been much fun in undergraduate days. A crowded, brightly-lit dance in Memorial Hall Sunday night featured a third-rate swing band and bore a resemblance to an awkward freshman mixer. But for these post-freshmen, having to line up, steer-like, in black tie and gowns to board yellow school buses to take them to the Park Plaza was probably made less noxious by the sign in one of the bus windows: "Very Important People."

Perhaps undergraduates wouldn't find all this pomp so distasteful had the University been feeding them for the past week. But meals end with classes, and seniors must stick around for almost two weeks so they can be paraded in front of their applauding ancestors. One junior, who as the offspring of a '58er has been experiencing the ritual from the inside, reports that at the usually stony Freshman. Union the serves are suddenly calling him by his first name (reading it off the colour-coded tag on his lapel) and asking him how large a portion he wants.

All this merely illustrates a well-known myth: the University goes to great lengths to keep its alumni happy, informed, and open-waleted. It would be nice if some of the attention were turned back to the pre-alumni. We don't need beach towels or tote bags, but some respect as individuals might be in order. Otherwise we too will fall prey to the same herd mentality which surfaced at the en masse picture-taking on Widener steps Monday, when most of the 540 returnees clumped happily together, all wearing their silly, floppy class tennis hats. Commented one wife: "With their hats on, you can't tell them apart."