What Harvard Needs

DOWN in New York City, where I come from, fare beaters, people who jump the turnstiles for the sake of $1.15, plague the subway system. The subway authorities estimate that 5 percent of all passengers evade the fare; at many stations, the rate approaches 40 percent. Liberal commentators, many of whom rarely use the subway (we call them limousine liberals), point to the high fare and the poverty that afflicts so many of the subway's riders.

But it shouldn't take much time in the bowels of the subway system to realize that for every disease-ridden, drugcrazed bum who manages to stagger through a turnstile without depositing a token, there are three 30-year-old downtown businesspeople who enjoy showing off the hurdling skills they developed while on the track team at some elite college like, say, Harvard. I found further proof of the lack of correlation between socioeconomic condition and depravity in what I saw at the Lowell House Formal last Saturday night at the Harvard Club of Boston.

I was a ticket-taker, and although I expected my job to consist mainly of selling and inspecting tickets, I spent most of the evening trying, with variable success, to prevent people without tickets from entering. My partner in this job and I agree that approximately 15 percent of the 400 or so people at the formal tried to enter without paying, and about 10 percent succeeded.

The loss of revenue was not quite so disturbing as the brazenness with which smug Harvard students tried to beat an admission fee. Also disturbing were the woefully stupid lies these presumably intelligent, aspiring picaresque heroes fabricated to get past me and my partner. Here are some examples. They disturbed me, but they might amuse you.

MANY, when asked to show their ticket, claimed that their date, who was inside, had it. When I tracked down these dates, I inevitably discovered that the dates had left their tickets at home. Some were honest enough to buy a ticket at that point, realizing that they were not kidding anyone.

Others, though, in true New York City style, accused the accuser. "Why are you so uptight?" they would angrily ask. Since when, I wondered, is a ticket-taker's uptightness grounds for free admission to a formal dance?

Ignorance was a favorite excuse: "Oh, I had to pay?"

Since Lowell House is not graced, thank God, by alumni who consider fully subsidized house formals a charitable purpose, the Lowell House formal cost money. So, yes, sorry, you have to pay.

Best of all was the juvenile "Can I go to the bathroom?" excuse, which had worked so well to extricate onesself from the most unpleasant experiences of kindergarten. A men's room was located within the hall, and young men would try to avoid paying for a ticket by arguing that they "just wanted to use the men's room."

If they had just wanted to use the men's room, why did they...

dress up in a tuxedo?

come to the Harvard Club of Boston?

bring a scantily-clad date?

There are plenty of men's rooms conveniently located on the Harvard campus which require neither formal dress nor a female companion for entrance.

SO WHAT'S the solution? An honor code? At a school as large as Harvard, I question whether solutions that presuppose a tight community will work. Is a required ethics course the answer? By college, it's too late to reform character through education. If watching Mr. Rogers and Davey and Goliath couldn't shape the character of at least 10 percent of the members of this generation, it is unlikely that additional instruction will do anything at all.

The only proposal I can offer is not original. I heard it first proposed in the movie Batman. Beholding the filth and depravity of Gotham City, the Joker exclaimed "This town needs an enema!" I think that if the Joker had been with me at the formal the other night, he would have agreed with me, that an enema--a big one--is just what this college needs.

David N. Greenwald '90 was a ticket-taker at the Lowell formal.