Fifteen Minutes: Big Bug on Campus: Harvard's Infested Underbelly

Background: Harvard is best known to most of the world through glossy recruitment pamphlets, Hollywood movies featuring glossy actors portraying clean-cut and brilliant students and glossy photos of well-established, aged-yet-immaculate colonial structures. In the public eye, Harvard is free of filth. To those outside the gates, our institution is spotless. Harvard students know better.

They have witnessed the cesspool better known as the women's washroom in the Science Center, the Barker Center reading room during flu season, the many generations of dust bunnies lurking in the corners of their own rooms. To the naked and uninformed eye, Harvard may be as sterile as Banana Republic. But how does it hold up to a plate of glossy agar?

Swab in hand, FM presents a small sampling of Harvard under the microscope:

Methods: The first germ sample taken became the control, the gold standard against which the rest of the samples were measured. What better benchmark to use than the inside of a reporter's mouth? Between excellent oral hygiene habits, good health and minimal cursing tendencies, how much cleaner can you get?

Swab #2 was the reason why almost all of us are here today--John Harvard's lucky foot. Every pre-frosh, tourist and passerby unaware of J.H.'s double-duty as a piss-post has rubbed this blessed appendage.

The third culture was taken from a newly-wiped-down table at C'est Bon in the Barker Center. Clean and comfortable, C'est Bon serves as refuge for aspiring hungry literati and displaced scientists wishing to escape the scourges of sick-building syndrome. Barker seems clean from afar, but with so many coming and going, are there microscopic visitors left behind?

The bacteria grown in plate number four were courtesy of the banister leading to the Loker Reading Room on the second floor of the Widener Library.

Last, but not least, were the very popular computers in the science center. Since the time of this experiment, our beloved imparters of e-mail have been replaced. (Due to infestation, perhaps?)

The agar plates were left to stagnate on a heater for one week, after which they were examined.

Results: Samples from Barker, Widener and the Science Center had moderate bacteria growth. True, these locations aren't completely sterile, but considering the vast number of frequents, these popular places are pretty unpolluted.

Conclusion: It is difficult to ascertain which outcome is most shocking. Is it (a) that the John Harvard culture had the least bacteria growth, (b) that the "control" culture from the reporter's mouth had more mould and bacteria growth than any of the other samples, or (c) that a clean-cut and well-washed Harvard student is dirtier than John Harvard?

The only possible explanation for the unreasonable cleanliness of John Harvard is the fact that urine is an extremely effective disinfectant. Thank those inebriated football players every Saturday night--they're making this campus a better place.

As for the infested-- er, intrepid reporter, there is always experimental error.

--- T. S. Field with Y. Ju