Deflating the Bubble

Last Friday, I was caught red-handed inside my Harvard bubble. I had just finished what I was convinced was a draining week of work, and I was preoccupied by the fact that I didn’t bring enough money to buy both a cookie and coffee from Peets.

Walking back to my dorm with my coffee, I noticed a green pickup truck with an odd-looking trailer parked near the Yard. Closer inspection revealed that it was in fact a rolling memorial to Alex Arredondo, a Marine from Boston who died at age 20 in Najaf, Iraq in August 2004.

I very quickly became captivated by what I saw: a picture of a sheet-white body in a coffin, a description of the last hours of Arredondo’s life, a letter to his parents from a naval transport en route to Iraq, and, most chillingly, a line in Arredondo’s life story that said he had enlisted at age 17. As I examined the coffin, the military boots, and the dog tags arrayed on the truck, the soldier’s father, Carlos Arredondo, walked up to me.

It was clear he was used to interacting with people who don’t know what in the world to say to him. According to the Boston Globe, this man had, upon hearing of his son’s death, flown into a blind rage and set fire to himself and the truck of the Marines who had brought the bad news.

Although he was fully physically healed, I still sensed some vast emptiness within him when he shook my hand. Suddenly, it became painfully clear that each one of the 3,166 American fatalities in the Iraq war—and war casualties everywhere—shatters a universe of cherished hopes for the family of the deceased.

It’s rare to encounter such a clear breach in the Harvard bubble. Most of us seem to refer to the “bubble” as if it were some geographical feature of Harvard Square. But it is as much mental as physical. We make conscious choices every day to protect ourselves by ignoring: We skip over the horrors of another article about more carnage in Iraq, or gingerly step around destitute homeless people in Harvard square. This willful ignorance grows out of a Harvard culture that makes it too easy to lose a sense of time and place and simply melt into a state of mind focused only on books and tests, parties and pregames.

It’s easy to forget that each day, people make decisions and face losses whose personal impacts dwarf those that most of us behind the Ivy gates of Harvard ever encounter. At 17—the age at which Alex Arredondo made the fateful decision to join the Marines—my toughest decision was whether or not to play hookey from school. I can’t imagine signing a declaration of my willingness to die for any cause—political views on Iraq aside. At 19, as I ponder my current toughest decisions—whether to take a class with one Nobel laureate or another—I hope that something I’m learning here will prepare me for the kind of decisions and hardship that we must all face at some point.

Jonathan B. Steinman ’10, a Crimson sports editor, lives in Grays Hall.