A Time for Searching

WHEN someone dies unexpectedly, most people usually feel shocked as well as grieved. The sudden deaths of five Harvard undergraduates this year--two of them apparent suicides--have forced the University community to come to grips with the painful implications of such losses. While we cannot hope fully to know or understand the causes of these deaths, we should not fail to reflect on their bearing on our own lives.

Too often when someone commits suicide, many often add to these feelings a sense of guilt that they did not see that person's suffering, and that perhaps they might have somehow prevented a death. Usually, such guilt is misplaced. But too often people refuse to address their contribution to the suffering of all members of the community by a myriad of daily insensitivities.

Some pressures and disappointments experienced by those in the Harvard community are certainly, unavoidable--an integral part of membership in a competitive, hard-working and ambitious population. However, many of the troubles and perhaps even pain experienced in a Harvard education could be reduced somewhat, if not eliminated altogether. While Harvard as a community has become more aware of race relations and sexual harassment, to what extent does it consider more personal, daily insensitivities? It is not by means of programs or policies, but by recognition and open discussion of our influence on others, that we can develop a healthier, more supportive community.

Friends at other colleges have asked me to describe my greatest disappointment at Harvard. To their suprise (and dismay), it is not the lack of contact with big name professors. (I actually had lunch with Galbraith three years ago). For me, the greatest disappointment has been the facility with which some students dismiss others, the degree to which convenience regulates relationships for so many people here. What disturbs me most, though, is when I see myself doing the same.

One friend revealed that his most trying experience as a graduate student in the Arts and Sciences has been the department's annual Christmas party. "It's like a fencing match with words as sabres. People foil merely to score points on wit and erudition. While many attacks can be quite cutting. It's even worse if you don't compete because you're seen as incompetent at best, and even stupid."

Teaching fellows and graders--I among them--perhaps too often succumb to criticism as a means of destruction, not instruction.

Perhaps professors sometimes deny that ideology, personality, and academic politics influence their teaching, tenure decisions, and scholarship. Some prefer, instead, to pretend that theirs is a pure vocation, a neutral pursuit of knowledge, independent of base emotions and ambitions which exist in the outside secular world.

In addition to one's treatment of others, one must be fair to oneself. Too often we define ourselves by our ability to achieve and the approbation which our achievements bring instead of by a more personal measure of self-worth. In a university such as Harvard, there are more than a few opportunities to feel disappointment, anxiety and failure. From an inability to make a freshman team to a low grade on a thesis, a failure to pass oral exams, or a denial of tenure, we allow subjective evaluations by others to constitute not only a system of values for us, but also to assign our place in this system. Perhaps it is our occasional failure to respect and value ourselves enough which contributes to our moments of insensitivity and injury to others.

Another graduate student friend remembered. "I was devastated when I came here. It wasn't the work so much as the criticism which gave me tremendous doubts about myself. If only I had known that others were going through the same thing.

When a student committed suicide at Brandeis this spring, the entire university had a day of mourning: professors had moments of silence before the beginning of class and a university-wide memorial service was held.

Dean of the College John B. Fox Jr. '59 is correct in observing that "at Harvard, the undergraduate Houses provide the community in which those sentiments are expressed, a community in which some scale of sensitivity and responsiveness exist."

But he may be mistaken in believing that in order to respect the privacy of people, it is not "appropriate for the college to note the occasion of the death" in a more public, college-wide way. The opportunity as a community to mourn the departed can help us to realize how much our lives combine. With this realization we have a better chance, both individually and as a group, to seek to improve the lives of those who remain.