Deconstructing Harvard

Over the past four years, as first a reporter and then College editor at The Crimson, I have seen columnists, student groups leaders and individual students define Harvard primarily as an institution, responsible--for better or (usually) worse--for all aspects of students' lives. Students who seek to change this usually unbending institution quickly learn that the Harvard that affects undergraduates is not one amorphous blob, but three interrelated but highly independent bodies of University, Faculty and College. Under this conception of Harvard, every question has an external answer, every problem has a responsible administrator. Harvard employees need a living wage? Lobby President Neil L. Rudenstine. Like your improved financial aid package? Thank Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles. Are Harvard students happy? Ask Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68.

But there is a second view of Harvard that only infrequently finds its way onto the editorial page but is commonly voiced in the dining halls and by senior gift representatives. We are Harvard, says this view; Harvard is its students. Those who take this view do not usually dispute the litany of institutional complaints voiced by the first group, but seek to de-emphasize them. Sure, it's annoying that the institution with the $11 billion endowment is too cheap to pay for a student center, or even a decent Springfest band. But Harvard rightly remains at the top of U.S. News rankings because what counts is not whether we have two-ply toilet paper, but that we benefit daily, in our classes, extracurriculars and dorm rooms from our extraordinary and multi-talented peers.

These two notions of Harvard parallel the political divide that defines the debate over the nation's most bitterly contested social issues. Liberals tend to be structuralists, arguing, for instance, that welfare is needed because macro-economic forces create little demand for low-skilled workers. Conservatives, by contrast, are usually individualists, arguing, for instance, that the responsibility for paying for the poor falls not on the state, but on the poor themselves, who are responsible for finding their own job in a free market system.

The two-time election of Bill Clinton and the election and later repudiation of the largely Republican Congress of 1994 shows the nation as a whole moving toward moderation, a middle path between the two extremes. Similarly, there is value to both "structuralist" and "individualist" notions of Harvard. However, while members of Congress must compromise in order to be able to create legislation palatable to the majority, students at the College are not similarly constrained by pragmatic forces, and thus students have little incentive to question their own take on Harvard and synthesize the two perspectives.

What would such a synthesis look like? Using social life as one example, a synthetic approach might agree that structuralists are right that the absence of hallways in many dorms and Houses and the domination of final clubs over the party scene make it extremely difficult for the majority of students to make new friends or meet potential partners. At the same time, a synthesis would recognize that individualists are also right to say that there are people out there you would want to meet, and that whether you find the places where those people are (be it through class, concentration, extracurricular, final club or sorority) is up to you.

The problem with this kind of synthesis is that it is too pat, too easy for those coming from each perspective to only pay lip service to the other. If believing in synthesis means accepting that individualism and structure are two points on a continuum rather than two mutually exclusive camps, where one places one-self on the spectrum can still be largely a product of personal experience. Harvard individualists are likely to internalize happiness and successes and reduce the importance of structure, "Since I made Phi Beta Kappa/got into the Advocate/have a boyfriend, you could have also if you wanted to," whereas structuralists tend to externalize unhappiness or failure and ignore the role of individual initiative, "Since I didn't get summa on my thesis/make it into the Spee/become a chick magnet, it is because thesis readers/final clubs/girls at Harvard are unfair/elitist/ugly."

What is flawed in these statements is the assumption that how Harvard impacts you is how it will impacts others. A more complex synthesis would be individually-tailored, recognizing that the same structures can have different effects based on the individual talents and capacities that each person brings to bear.

To take just three of the most commonly discussed examples:

Advising-Senior surveys consistently show that while the quality of academic advice varies dramatically across concentrations, the level of personal advice is uniformly low. The system works well for those who are in small concentrations, have parents or older friends who know about the University and who are personally independent. It works badly for those who are academically unsure of their choices and those who have (or run into) serious emotional, friend or family problems.

Extracurriculars--The system works well for those who have talent and want to compete and achieve individually in large, hierarchically arranged organizations. There are fewer opportunities for those who want to split time among a variety of groups, fewer still for those who really enjoy doing something at which they have little talent.

Social life--It works well for serial monogamists (people who like long-term relationships), not well for people who like random hook-ups or casual dating. It's good for social butterfly types, because there are a lot of cool people to meet, but terrible for introverts, because there are very few opportunities to meet new people.

And so on. Harvard is not one size fits all. In general, people who are self-confident, individualistically goal-oriented and self-confident in all aspects of their lives will flourish, whereas those who are less sure of themselves, who value community or who are more interested in happiness than in academic or occupational goals may have been better off elsewhere.

Harvard is--more than either its structures or its students--an ethos, a belief that success by conventional standards should precede all else. A true synthesis of individual and structure recognizes that the difference between happiness and unhappiness at Harvard is a matter of individual fit, of whether one's personal values match up with those held by Harvard. As we leave Harvard and go our separate ways, we need to remember that Harvard's ethos is only one among many, and that lifelong happiness will only come when each of us finds a place with an ethos we can share. Jal D. Mehta'99, a social studies concentrator in Eliot House, was executive editor of The Crimson in 1998.