Are You Tired? I'm Tired.

"HARVARD STUDENTS are just like everyone else," said the man who pretended to check my backpack as I left Hilles Library.

I paused for a moment on my way to the door, waiting to see whether he would find it necessary to argue this seemingly obvious point further. He did.

"They get up in the morning, they do their work, they eat and they sleep. Same as the rest of us." Properly respectful of this deep insight, I nodded thoughtfully and left the building.

As I walked back to the river, however, it seemed that something about the monumental wisdom I had just heard wasn't quite true. At first, I couldn't quite identify what. And then I remembered.

"They sleep," he had said.

HARVARD STUDENTS do indeed sleep. They do not, however, sleep in any way that would support the claim that Harvard students are like all other people. My tutorial spent 20 minutes that same day commiserating over how tired we were, after which two members promptly began to snore.

The professor said nothing to them. At first, I thought that she might have been too tired to notice, but then I realized that she looked sickeningly awake. She must, I decided, be part of a conspiracy that prevents students from sleeping normally. At that very moment, she was reveling in her success.

I decided to measure the extent of the damage so that I could organize the Resistance. I conducted a precisely calibrated, cross-sectional, amazingly representative survey of 34 undergraduates, with a margin of error of plus or minus 87 points.

Fifty-three percent of those surveyed admitted that they fall asleep in classes. Because the survey was largely conducted in section, we can only speculate as to how many respondents claimed untruthfully that they never sleep in class, hoping to avoid the wrath of onlooking TF's. The actual percentage of dozers is probably much higher.

One TF himself admitted to intermittent classroom narcolepsy.

It makes sense that we sleep during the day, because we certainly do not sleep at night. The night after my enlightenment at the hands of the Hilles bag checker, I found myself preparing for bed at three o'clock in the morning.

The next day at breakfast my roommate entered the dining hall, sat down next to me, stared blankly through half-shut eyes and announced, "I was up until seven." Moments later, he had soaked his Frosted Flakes with Salada tea.

Harvard not only teaches students to stay awake at night, but also to expect others to conform to their own masochistic regimens. Seventy-four percent of those surveyed, when asked the latest time that they would telephone other students, gave the same hour that they normally go to sleep themselves.

I presented a premed friend with the above data, which I claimed indicated that we are living in an exploitative environment where sinister forces conspire to keep us disoriented through fatigue. I urged her to help end the Tyranny of Wakefulness, but she refused: "But then the geeks who don't sleep will get ahead." Her answer chilled me as I realized how deeply the anti-sleep forces had ingrained their message in her brain.

THE RISING TIDE of insomnia must be checked. I hereby call for the immediate formation of Students for Improving and Extending Sleep Today and Always (SIESTA). Given the dire circumstances in which we begin our struggle, SIESTA will take drastic actions to raise unconsciousness. We'll begin with a pajama-clad "sleep-in." At 10:00 tonight, let all those who would make things right assemble in front of University Hall. Bring pillows.

The negative connotation that "sleeping in" carries in a society dominated by the Protestant work ethic is a tool of the very forces draining our creative energies by forcing us to stay awake. In reclaiming the term for positive protest activities, SIESTA attacks the subliminal linguistic conventions of the anti-sleepers, a facet of the struggle that should not be underestimated. Even the Civil Liberties Union of Harvard, an organization ostensibly committed to protecting individuals against coercive power, preaches "eternal vigilance."

Bleary-eyed zombies are all over campus, yet some lunatics still undermine sleep, calling for a 24-hour Harvard library. Do they not realize the transparency of their plot? It it succeeds, sleeping will indeed be tantamount to conceding defeat in the undergraduate rat race. SIESTA will fight this pernicious evil to the bitter end.

Let no one doubt our resolve. We're tired, and we're not going to take it anymore.