A Long Winding Train

"I went to the College Jubilee on the 8th instant. A noble and well-thought of anniversary. The pathos of the occasion was extreme and not much noted by the speakers. Cambridge at any time is full of ghosts. But on that day, the anointed eye saw the crowd of spirits that mingled with the procession in the vacant spaces, year by year, as the classes proceeded, and then the far longer train of ghosts that followed the Company, of the men that wore before us the College honors and the laurels of the state--the long winding train reaching back into eternity."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Harvard campus speaks to us as we walk through it, quietly voicing thoughts from the sides of walls and lintels and gateways, where generations past have inscribed quotations meant to be meaningful to the new ages of inhabitants. It is easy to walk across the campus deaf to these musings and epigrams--we do it all the time. We can't always stop to ponder the side of Emerson Hall and its quotation from Psalm 8: "What is man that thou art mindful of him?" or really consider what it means to enter the Yard across from Harvard Bookstore in order to "grow in wisdom" and leave it in order to better serve our country and our kind.

Harvard's voices are too profound and various to hear and process all at once, just as the University itself is too large and diverse to hold in one steady glance. But a walk through the Yard the week before Commencement gave me a chance to listen to some of the voices I've ignored over the last four years, and I stopped longest at my favorite plaque, on the right wall of the gate opposite the Science Center, where Emerson's journal entry from a day in 1836 is inscribed in elegant lettering. The slate tablet speaks more quietly than the shouts of the marble or granite inscriptions in the Yard, but its message is particularly resonant at this Commencement time. Emerson's quotation provides an unintentional counter to the pithy but complacent idea that can imply the worst about Harvard's priority system: The students are here for four years, the Faculty for a lifetime but the University forever.

The philosopher recognized what he felt the celebration's speakers did not--and what the University as a collective institution may seem occasionally to forget--that a school is nothing without its people, both the ghosts of those who have been here in the past (the distant dead and the alive but graduated) and the red-blooded individuals who make up our current community--students, faculty, staff and administrators alike. We sometimes ignore the ghosts in the bustle of our lives, but we also act independently on their advice, needing no ghosts come from the grave to tell us about the claims of a just society.

The past four years have seen protests and activism concerning Harvard's treatment of its people, from the giant (if at times incomprehensibly complex) rally in front of University Hall for the rights of workers and against sexual violence towards women in 1999, to the star-studded event in front of Littauer for a living wage this spring, with calls for student centers, a more open tenure process and improved advising echoing in between. Students in the Class of 2000, if they remember anything beyond their individual experiences here, will likely remember the energy expended (not always successfully) for the better treatment of members of the community on all levels.

As a class we have feelings about this institution which range from adamantly negative to lukewarmly neutral to euphorically ecstatic. Those who have hated it here did so because their interaction with the ghosts and the living beings who make up the best of this place was minimal, replaced instead by bureaucratic frustration, poor or absent advising, and a belief that Harvard didn't care about them as individuals. Those who have loved it here did so because through a combination of a lot of luck and some purpose, they spent four years surrounded by people--professors, friends and colleagues--who have changed the way they look at the world and the way they see themselves in that world. The many who are neutral, those who have at times been on both ends of the spectrum, wish that more of us would fall into the latter, happier group.

This farewell piece traditionally requires a personal statement, so the question is, "Which group do I fall into?" My answer is best expressed by a former Crimson editor who considers herself a proud but critical Harvard alumna: "Someone once asked me, 'Didn't you enjoy it?' and I said, 'Well, yes, but being on the Crimson, it was my job to criticize it.' I think that's the most interesting place to be, perched between devotion and mild contempt."

Though I might replace "mild contempt" with "critical disapproval," the statement nevertheless captures my perspective of Harvard. From an objective standpoint, I have been very lucky here: I found a concentration in classics which was small enough to be accessible and challenging enough to be academically inspiring and an activity in The Crimson which was personally and socially fulfilling. Along the way, I have found friends and teachers whom I will leave today with great appreciation and not a little sadness. But also along the way, I learned to criticize the institution which has given me so very much and struggled to balance my affection for it with my skepticism of it.

We have all often been too busy, focused upon our own desires and obligations, to stop and listen to the voices from the walls and lintels of the Yard in the last four years, too busy to acknowledge the presence of the ghosts in our Harvard lives, those spirits who have influenced us and everyone around us. But Commencement in the magic year 2000 is as good a time as any for administrators and students alike to stop and listen to the voices of the Yard and to acknowledge the influence of Harvard's ghosts. Perhaps they will serve as the ghost of Hamlet's father did for the young Prince of Denmark (Class of 1600?), helping to whet their and our almost blunted purposes. The winding train of ghosts of students past which we are about to join can still have influence, and some of that influence will be ours.

Susannah B. Tobin '00, a classics concentrator in Lowell House, was editorial chair of The Crimson in 1999.