Community Disappears During Finals

Give yourself a big pat on the back. You've made it; no matter how "crazy" or "stressed-out" your reading period and exam schedule has been, at 5:15 p.m. today, summer will officially begin.

Whether you choose to celebrate by packing, Grilling into the wee hours of the dawn, or running as fast as you can away from this scary, scary land, the whole school will join together in a collective sigh of relief. End-of-exams-glee will be shared by the entire community, including and especially the dining hall workers, the custodians and the exam proctors.

But this collective feeling of liberation is one of the only things we have shared in the past month. For the sense of community that we tried to build during the semester has crumbled ever since we gave our professors one last hurrah, a smattering of polite applause or standing ovations after their last lectures.

Let's face it--I am pretty much out of luck. As a columnist dedicated to applauding the spirit of community service and activism pulsing through our campus, I have hit the off- season.

Harvard students' true Hobbesian nature has unabashedly emerged. It's an anarchic war of all against all. The war is played out at the Xerox machines of Lamont (The Spring 1997, Vol II, never seen it, wink, wink!), the sparse printing facilities in house computer labs (I brought that paper from my own room, damm it,) and in study group strife (if he doesn't send out his reading summaries over e-mail by midnight, tonight, I am going to send out my assailants).

What's more, common courtesy (not mowing down first-years in the last sprint to the reserve desk) and manners (letting mounds of dining hall food, trays and silverware decay at the foot of the entryway) seem to have been forgotten.

This rude, curt and genuinely self-absorbed behavior, all in the name of academic focus, reminds me of an appropriate adage from the Adams House tunnels, that keeps me in check on a daily basis:

"HURRY!. You've got to get there (they are counting on you)! Oh! The thought of what could happen if you don't get there in time (if you don't turn it in on time!) Don't do laundry! Don't hold the door for the guy behind you! Be rude! Leave the dining hall trays piled with the half-eaten food outside your door! Don't make eye contact! You are NOT trivial like they are! Because you are the CRUX! The LYNCHPIN that holds the universe together! You are a HARVARD student! And no person anywhere EVER has done anything approaching the vital importance of whatever you are doing NOW!!!"

Our current behavior seems to have been memorialized by our forebearers at this insane institution.

Why is this month different from all other months? Our campus is currently overpopulated with organizations, clubs and networks. By the end of our four years, most of us will be trained to introduce ourselves by regurgitating our resumes and activities as the major forms of identification. The boy behind you in line for storage, rather than funny or cute, is the football player from the A.D. The girl on left spends her days with the International Relations Council and Kirkland HoCo. Sometimes we even forget peoples' given names and just refer to each other as "HRO boy" or "the CHANCE chair."

At Harvard we define ourselves by our communities more than anything else. We cling to the friends, structure and intimacy provided by smaller niches, islands of calm in the sea of Harvard life. For some reason, in the last month of each term, we sever these ties, dropping everything to revert back to primal, egoistic selves.

There is always an exception. The Harvard Living Wage Campaign did not let reading period narcissism hinder a successful rally that included various Cambridge speakers and Harvard faculty members.

But less vocal forms of activism have waned during the past month. Cambridge and Boston public schools students who participate in Harvard-sponsored community service programs are left hanging two months before their term ends while we attend review sessions, formals and study groups.

This month has allowed students to prioritize their own agendas, in the name of academic intensity. Soon, however, we will be rejoining collective groups and we will be forced to sacrifice our immediate needs for a common goal.

Over the next few weeks, Harvard students will travel all over the country and the world--working with NGOs in Bangladesh, creating economic policy in Panama and helping oust guerillas in South America. Some will surely don pumps or a tie and head over to Wall Street to try out their corporate selves. Other students will stay in Cambridge or Boston and continue where they left off at the end of the semester, staffing the numerous successful summer Phillips Brooks House Association programs. Whatever adventures await us this summer, they will almost always involve joining a community.

And whether in a classroom, an office, or a foreign country, collective communities come with certain obligations. We might have to sacrifice the personal agendas that seemed so precious during exam period. Even if we are at home, chilling with our buddies, Dad or Mom might ask for help setting the table before dinner.

So, hopefully, this month of self-absorption will not leave permanent damage. These weeks of strange dining habits, work habits and the breakdown in manners must be short-lived. There will be very few times in our futures when we can be so self-centered and get away with it. Reconciling our own agendas with those of our future families, workplaces and other affiliations will be crucial. So, in the meantime, let's clean up the trash, say goodbye to our neighbors and ease back into the real world--where such behavior would be unaccepted.