The Search for Community at Harvard

"The dominant note of [Harvard] is impersonal. The vastness of the reading room, the great mass of students who are necessarily total strangers to each other, the lack of any common life not only of the School as a whole but of individual classes--all make against having that feeling of at-homeness without which there can be no inner peace and satisfaction."

I recently came across these words, uttered by a noted Harvard professor and thought they should be shared. It's a standard criticism of the place: too big, too self-absorbed, too cold. Harvard may have a mythic reputation, people say, but for the best undergraduate experience, you should go to Princeton or Amherst or Rice.

The funny thing is, these words were delivered decades ago. Felix Frankfurter, one of the great legal scholars of the twentieth century, was responding to increased enrollments, increased materialism and what he perceived to be decreased civility among his students in 1930. The more times change, the more they stay the same.

There has been much talk recently about "community" at Harvard. Issues like randomization, the exclusivity of the final clubs, the fate of Radcliffe--even universal key card access--all make us consider with whom we want to live, with whom we want to associate and what institutions and ideals we hold dear.

It is important to think about such issues because a sense of community is what makes life bearable. When people complain that Harvard has no social life and that school spirit is non-existent, they are complaining less about deficiencies of the University itself and more about their own personal levels of inner peace and satisfaction. Spending the best years of your life sober and alone just isn't satisfying.

But are we that alone? Has Harvard's sense of community really diminished so precipitously? Professor Frankfurter gives us some much-needed perspective: Agonizing over the university's spiritual well-being has been de rigeur for much of the "Harvard century," if not longer. The 1990s may be a bleak time in terms of civic engagement, but at least on a comparative scale, so too were the 1930s.

What's more, the number of opportunities for social interactions on campus has grown tremendously in recent years. Consider ethnic and cultural groups: In the early 1980s, just five ethnic groups represented the entire campus; today over 50 groups are recognized by the University. Social capital among the student body seems at first glance on the rise.

But what kind of social capital is it? Everyone and her roommate may be in several student groups, but does that necessarily translate into greater interaction and more comprehensive social networks? The answer, I fear, is no. While some of the new groups are public service organizations (which bring people together in common purpose), most are very specific in their target audience (see "The Texas Club") and feature long lists of inert members. A telling example is the Asian-American Association (AAA), which is one of the largest ethnic organization on campus. This distinction is based on the size of AAA's electronic mailing list, which numbers in the high hundreds.

AAA may be a noteworthy political presence on camp is, but it is what Harvard's Robert Putnam calls a "tertiary association." Tertiary groups claim large memberships, but the only acts of membership most of the members perform are simple and remote, like writing a check or reading a weekly newsletter received via e-mail.

Tertiary associations are important, but they add little to a community's sense of spiritual cohesion. The same goes for other electronic means of bringing people together (like the new Harvard College Web site, or Pforzheimer House's chat room): they facilitate communication with our peers but with the initial stipulation that we be sitting alone at our desk, staring at a computer screen. Out of such a sense of isolation a spirited sense of community cannot be forged.

In fact, social capital at Harvard College is in a pretty deplorable state. The Undergraduate Council is perceived to be a joke, so much so that in Adams House in the latest election, only eight brave residents dared to exercise their right to vote. Support for athletic teams is non-existent. The only things that motivate people to attend sporting events are the prospect of getting free stuff (Midnight Madness) or the prospect of getting drunk (the Harvard/Yale game).

So what is to be done? Should we throw our hands up and admit defeat? Are we condemned to living forever without a sense of community? In fact, that attitude is precisely what leads to a decline in social capital. So many of us are caught up in complaining about how the University won't let us party and how the school has no spirit that we do not pause to do anything about it.

It is not the Harvard administration's responsibility to build a greater undergraduate community. It is ours. We can be passive and blame the administration for our ills. Or we can stop complaining and become active agents, forging our own connections, determining our own course, working together to find some meaning in that great thing called The Harvard Experience. Sujit M. Raman '99-'00 is a history concentrator in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.