A Better Carnival

I dropped by the Harvard College Carnival on Friday. The whole thing reeked of state-school envy, a troubling sentiment I feel, if the College is to lead the nation and not merely reflect it. Nevertheless, I did enjoy myself, and for this I congratulate the newly elected College Events Board. The bumper cars were very cool.

Enjoyable though it was, the carnival will probably be forgotten. It was like Harvard-Yale without the hookups. Or alcohol. Or meaning. It was also like a large family reunion—noisy and irregular—with everyone smiling on for dear life. The matriarch had coerced everyone into attending, and that is why they did, secure in the return to routine upon its happy end.

Ultimately, the carnival was probably a distraction from building a real community at Harvard. It was sporadic instead of regular, forced instead of voluntary and short instead of long-lasting, to the point that its meager achievements obscured its ambitious aims.

If for me, the carnival wasn’t enough, for Harry R. Lewis ’68, the former Dean of the College, it would’ve been far too much. His flashy recent book, “Excellence Without a Soul,” criticized the College’s “daycare” approach to its students, citing Pub Night and last year’s Harvard State Fair as prime exemplars. He argues the College’s paternalism discourages individual responsibility.

Perhaps. Lewis is more contemplative than convincing in that section. What is definitely true, however, is that the College has changed markedly since his student years, though Lewis, who arrived from Roxbury Latin in 1964, doesn’t seem to have realized it. Over the last century, an increase in diversity has been inversely proportional to the amount of students’ shared experiences at the College.

For most of the College’s history, Harvard freshmen tended to arrive from a small number of elite prep schools, knowing each other and their families quite well. Most were Protestants, and so Harvard had a daily chapel. But as meritocracy gained traction within the admissions process, the communal institutions that were natural outgrowths of students’ homogeneity became outdated. In a revolutionary move in 1886, University President Charles W. Eliot, Class of 1853, abolished the daily chapel service. The great books controversies of the 1960s removed any shared requirement of a general education.

The point, of course, is not that diversity is bad—each of those changes were necessary in their time. Rather, after admitting more minorities, the College should have made more of an effort at integrating them. The anticipated pub, for example, is a step in the right direction. It attempts to provide a shared experience for the College that is regular, voluntary, and unlimited. It’s a little far from campus—ideally it’d be located where University Hall is—but I think we’ll be alright.

Harry Lewis, predictably, disagrees with this. He likens the creation of the Harvard pub to “the fine tradition of rulers calming their citizens by providing entertainment and alcohol.” If Lewis had his way, he’d either abolish the carnivals or continue them in order to placate students. The former move would be anachronistic. The latter will do nothing for a real community.

In the past, Harvard never had carnivals because there was little need for them. Indeed, for the aristocrats who came here, Harvard was already a kind of carnival. Back in his day, one aristocrat enjoyed his. Today, perhaps we’ll be allowed to enjoy ours.



Sahil K. Mahtani ’08, a Crimson associate editorial chair, is a history concentrator in Winthrop House.