The Wrong Message for a Class Gift

"Be all that you can be, just make sure that it makes a lot of dough," is the message of this year's senior t-shirt.

"Going For the Gold," says the front, which is adorned with a grey Harvard seal and five red circles arranged like the Olympic rings. On the back is a gold "Harvard Express" card issued to the Class of 1989.

What was the Class Committee thinking when they selected this design? While the Class of 1988 shirt mimicked a "Dick and Jane" children's book and the 1987 shirt pictured a T map full of options, this year's seniors are supposed to have only one goal: money.

SENIOR events and souvenirs are supposed to bring the class together, but this shirt leaves a lot of us out. Pardon me, I'm going to be a starving journalist. I probably won't even answer American Express' generous offer to let me get a charge card for only $55 a year.

The Olympic imagery is the worst part. Even though pro athletes can now participate in sports like hockey and basketball, the Olympics are still special. Going for the gold means doing your absolute best for your honor and that of your country. Tell us, Dave Berkoff, do you feel the same way about your gold medal from Seoul and your charge card?

All the magazines refer to our generation as material girls and boys, but I always believed that wasn't true here. Undergraduate participation in public service is at one of its highest levels ever. Surely all those people can't be doing it just to pad their resumes.

Materialistic slogans are not unprecedented. Last year's Eliot House t-shirt read "lowest GPA, highest starting salary." But I thought that was just Eliot. I guess not.

PERHAPS I've been listening to the Harvard administration for too long. They claim that the University wants to promote selflessness. They brag about the public service programs. and each year at Baccalaureate, President Bok exhorts the graduating class to do good rather than just do well. Nice words, Derek, but you're being drowned out by the Class Committee and the Alumni Association that works with it.

But perhaps that's the point. Peace Corps volunteers have less money to donate to the University than do investment bankers.