The Trouble with Fame

Freshman year, I didn’t mind them. At first, they were endearing; they made me feel important. I liked giving them directions, even posing for them on occasion. But that changed. Very, very quickly.

Really, very quickly.

It was the second Friday of April (oh, how long ago it seems). The weather was warming and the smell of blooming flowers and fresh-cut grass was in the air. I had just woken up in my first-floor room in Stoughton Hall, which faced out onto the Yard. Yawning, I groped my way in the darkness to my window, to open up the blinds and greet the beautiful spring day.

Faces pressed against the glass—not unlike those Garfield dolls suctioned-cupped to a car window—a group of camera-toting, map-clutching tourists were trying to peer into my room. Apparently, they had decided that peering into a complete stranger’s room at 10 o’clock on a Friday morning would be a good way to see how Harvard students live. I felt like a fish in an aquarium, except I doubt fish feel violated.

Before I launch into my diatribe, I’d like to clarify: I have nothing against tourists, per se. I am frequently a tourist myself in other areas of the world. But it seems that those who visit Harvard view the University’s buildings and grounds as only half the appeal. The other half is that rare animal, scurrying about in its natural habitat: the Harvard student.

Enough is enough. I’m fed up with nearly getting run over by a tour bus every time I try to cross Mass. Ave. in the morning as it attempts to parallel park in a space that a motorcycle would have difficulty backing into.

I’ve had it with the glares that I get when I have to decline to take a picture of Bob, Sue, and the kids when I’m rushing to a class that started five minutes ago.

I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve literally had to jump into traffic to avoid getting run over by a swarm of “I Love Boston”-sweatshirt-wearing, stupidly-grinning visitors from Podunk who take over an entire sidewalk.

I’ve had it with the guy setting up a 15-foot-wide tripod in the middle of a gate to photograph the Science Center. And the Barker Center. And Memorial Hall. And Widener.

When I’m asked, repeatedly, by a balding, elderly gentleman and his wife whether I’m happy (they had read in a magazine that Harvard students are not happy) and whether my IQ happens to exceed 120 (a friend had told them that this was a requirement for admission), I want to tear my hair out slowly—follicle by follicle.

When I have to walk along the periphery of the Yard to get to class because the 50 yards in front of the John Harvard statue is blocked off by tourists climbing over each other to touch the statue’s foot, it makes me want to give those who urinate on it a gold medal for service to the community.

Something must be done. What, you ask? I don’t really know: it’s a catch twenty-two. Part of Harvard’s value comes from its fame, so to bar tourists would be, in a sense, to bite the hand that feeds. At the same time, this isn’t an ant-farm, it’s a university. So someone in University Hall, please do something.

Brian J. Rosenberg ’08, a Crimson editorial editor, is a History and Science concentrator in Lowell House.