The Reporter's Notebook

Invalidating Identification

Chairs in the Quincy House dining hall aren't the only things around campus that should be higher to work better. Take, for instance, the embossed letters and numbers on the roughly 6000 new identification cards handed out last week.

Most colleges hand out identification cards to students only at the start of freshman year. They never ask would-be scholars to come back again to some central location, wait in long lines, sit in an uncomfortable chair, and say cheese for the camera.

Maybe going to a school with a very large endowment has something to do with this luxury. And if, like me, you made the mistake of actually smiling into the camera that first September--and wound up carrying in your wallet for a year a picture of yourself looking like a Sid and Marty Kroft character--that's good.

But there is a danger inherent in handing out new i.d. cards every year: your chances of screwing up the process are four times as great.

If you still have your card from last year, dig it out of your wallet and compare it to your new one. Right away, it's clear the new ones are a lot flimsier. This year's cards are not as thick as the old ones. What takes a little more subtlety to discover, however, is that the embossments on the cards are not as high on the new ones, either.

Apparently, the i.d. snafu has caused some problems. The raised letters and numbers come into play when the cards are used, for instance, to check out books or to charge purchases on term bills. At least one student we know had trouble getting some medicine last week from the University Health Services pharmacy.

Does this mean all 6000 of us have to trudge back to Mem Hall soon for another bout with the camera? Nope, according to Maureen Granfield of the Term Bill Office. She says there is "no way" of that happening. Folks in Holyoke Center say any students with particularly low embossments can come in and use the i.d. office's own machines to get new cards. The rest of us will just have to make do.

Moondance

Seniors and juniors may have a hard time getting into Science A-17, "The Astronomical Perspecive," since Professor Owen Gingerich said he would give preference to sophomores and freshmen in the class's lottery. But everyone can get into the groove of the music Gingerich and his sidekick, Lecturer in Astronomy David Latham, play before and after class.

Star-gazing students were welcomed into Science Center B last Wednesday to the strains of Gustav Holst's "The Planets." Okay, a pretty conservative choice as these things go. The sound came out of a compact disc player recently purchased by the Science Center. But then things got really weird.

Probably for the first time in Harvard's 350-year history, students and shoppers alike were able to leave a lecture hall to the music of David Bowie. If listening to his "Space Oddity" was itself a Harvard oddity, hearing Pink Floyd the Friday afterwards was even more unexpected. "Gotta have some Floyd," Latham was heard saying as he inserted the compact disc.

"I'm going to try and expose people to a wide range of music, so long as it has some astronomical connection," Latham said after class. "I'm also having fun justifying buying a couple of CD's."

The music is also incoporated into the lectures themselves. On Friday, Gingerich and Latham showed a real-time film of a total eclipse of the sun. After several moments of blackness, the sun began to peak out from behind the moon. Just as its light once again began to flicker, the opening guitar strains of The Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun" filtered across the room. As the sun once again enveloped the screen, George Harrison began singing and the students began applauding for a job well-done.

The Dean Who Flew The Coop

Book-buyers at the Coop last Thursday afternoon wondering who that older gentleman was waiting in line with them, take note. That was no older gentleman. That was Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57.

What's L. Fred doing with the hoi poloi in line at the Coop?

"He's been shopping for classes to audit," said Lori Shoemaker, the dean's assistant. Jewett, she says, is thinking about attending a class either Tuesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. or Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. "He told us to hold both times on his calendar."

"He has very broad interests and tries to do it every semester," she adds. "He really likes to keep in touch with what's happening."

For those out there who would like to keep in touch with the dean, and maybe see how he stacks up in section, hurry and sign up for Professor Wallace T. MacCaffrey's History 1400a, "Early Modern Britain I, 1400-1600." The book Jewett bought is for that class. And its meeting time? Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 12 to 1.

The Reporter's Notebook appears every Monday in The Harvard Crimson.