Unlikely Ambassadors

"HELLO, I'm calling from the Harvard Law School Fund," I start off, anticipating my first donation of the evening as I fundraise by telephone.

"Oh no," invariably responds the alumnus.

Oh yes. You are being solicited. You should know by now that as a Harvard graduate, you will be solicited every year, by mail and by phone, for the rest of your life. I even called alumni who just died.

"Did you hear the latest news about the law school..." I launch into tales of appointments.

No, most didn't hear. Most didn't care. Many left Harvard for far-off states and commitments, no longer concerned with a diverse faculty or a student say in University policy. Others sank into harried East Coast jobs, working at the office well past nine at night, shielded by layers of secretaries. For almost all, Harvard was reduced to a line on a resume, a loan to repay, an annual fundraising plea, some drunken anecdotes, a few bad memories.

"You might as well stop right there. I've never given to Harvard and I never will," insists an alumnus, finding open ear on which to vent all his frustrations with this school.

Harvard professors ignored us, complain disgruntled alumni. Students competed so much that our voices were drowned out, they continue; in the library volumes assigned for class, pages were torn out. Recent Harvard graduates are often not the best in the field, and what's worse is they think they are, the alumni assert.

AFTER four years at Harvard, these concerns sound familiar. Critics of the College find similar faults. But I was being paid by the University to justify the system, at least enough to garner a donation and a modicum of alumni interest.

The term-time job was portent for post-graduate life; when Harvard is reduced to a memory, we have to pick and choose what remains of its meaning. Most Harvard students, when asked where we go to school, reply Boston first, then Cambridge if coaxed, and only under extreme pressure do we say Harvard. Upon graduation, are we going to buy into the legend, sporting the sweatshirt and ring, joining the Harvard club? Or are we going to lead our lives away from school connections and attitudes, continue to say we went to school simply "in Boston?" We are in a position to immerse ourselves in a network of fellow Harvard achievers or abnegate the experience entirely.

Either way, when we graduate we all become unlikely ambassadors for The Harvard Experience. On one hand, we sell it; on the other hand, we disparage it.

IN the new release, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Professor Jones instructs his class to do exactly the opposite of what brings him success. In a way, what we've learned in the last four years poses straw figures for us to knock down. For most, knowing about deconstruction, 16th century Japanese history and "the iron triangle" have little relevance in our lives; teaching us how to learn is really just Harvard's euphemism for teaching us whatever the professors feel like sharing.

Upon graduation, we are left with the Harvard seal and the same circumstances we came from--the same family, the same financial situation, the same race. Once again, Horatio Alger's standard virtues--common sense, hard work and determination--will be the traits that get most of us anywhere. The Degree can only accelerate and ease the trek to come.

ON the phone, the alumni shared career crises--some denied partner status, others yearning to switch jobs, many balancing child-rearing with work. They shared family concerns--making payments on their first suburban home, divorcing, paying hospital bills. These are circumstances that we'll encounter as well. But the difference between a Harvard education for this class and the alumni before us is not to be found in mundane events.

An elderly alumus once asked me the percentage of women students. When I told him it was less than 40 percent, he said, "That is a disproportionate share." Of course, I thought, we've grown up thinking women can achieve the same as men and it would make sense if Harvard reflected that by admitting a fair share. "It's too many women," he continued, "They just want to come to Harvard to prove they can do it, then they quit their jobs a few years later to have children." He went on to explain about "those Asian students who beat out our homegrown boys for the best grades."

We were born in the heat of student protest, when youths spouted visions of changing the world and opening society; now youth are more likely to accept the status quo. But, in a way every student now takes for granted what used to be the highest of goals--women's rights, civil rights and our nation at peace. Even the most traditional of students in the Class of 1989 have made friends with students of different ethnicities, races, religions and sexual preferences.

Hopefully, these internalized messages of openness will be what differentiates this generation's leadership from the past. We can still criticize our college experience for not being the intellectual epiphany people expect from Harvard. And we can demand further opening of this community. But if we take away one thing from Harvard, it won't be a career or an inapplicable liberal arts education; it will be an open mind.