Leading From Home

We all introduce ourselves to new people following the standard formula: name, House or dorm, and concentration. But the question that sparks the most interest — at least for me — is where we are from.

Our ears twist to locate an engaging foreign accent; our eyebrows raise when a Midwesterner enters the dining hall. Then, of course, we begrudgingly smile when we hear the old standards: California, New York, and Massachusetts. Just like California often means “the Bay Area” and New York means “the City,” Massachusetts is synonymous with Boston.

I’m from Massachusetts — but not from Boston. I’m from a different kind of Massachusetts. No, not Newton. Nope, not Framingham. Worcester? I’m impressed you’ve heard of it, but no — not far enough west.

We often talk about the Harvard bubble, but there’s a bubble beyond that – the Greater Boston bubble. Eastern Massachusetts has its wonders; in fact, it’s wonderful. But I’m from Western Mass. Home to the first motorcycle and the first American automobile. Basketball and volleyball. Emily Dickinson and Dr. Seuss. Mount Holyoke, Amherst, Williams, and Smith. Massachusetts’ persistent athletic pride permeates historic landmarks, cultural icons, and liberal arts stalwarts. Western Mass overflows with small-town America’s classic charm: soup served in Styrofoam containers, locally owned farms that double as mom-and-pop ice-cream shops.

Of course, these communities — our communities — face particular hardship. Unemployment rates drop in and around Boston but lag behind further west. Even as deaths fall statewide, Western Massachusetts sees more and more of its residents’ lives stolen by the opioid epidemic. Residents face transportation injustice, funding initiatives like the Green Line Extension and The Big Dig in the wealthiest parts of the state while Western Massachusetts struggles with a disconnected public transit network.

I discuss my home because it is not unlike those of my peers. Many students hail from these communities, politically forgotten and economically disadvantaged. When the Class of 2019 entered Harvard, they had plans to change this unfortunate reality and pursue justice. Students were committed to serving their communities — perhaps not the communities they originally came from, but at least a community — with approximately 5 percent looking to public service and nonprofits and nearly 15 percent looking to work in government. Dishearteningly, by the time the Class of 2019 graduated, only 5 percent planned to go into government and 6 percent continued on to public service or nonprofit work.

Approximately 15 percent of both the classes of 2018 and 2019 claim that the 2016 election dissuaded them from pursuing government work. While less than 20 percent of those individuals decided to shift their post-graduate plans from the private sector to the public sector, over 35 percent swore off all positions in the federal government. When considering the data from past years, however, the 2016 election amounts to an excuse, plain and simple.

In the three editions of The Crimson’s senior survey run before ballots were cast in 2016, the rate at which graduates pursue government, public service, or nonprofit work out of college has never exceeded 13 percent and fell to a low of 7 percent. Sure, returning to our communities, our homes, is often not the most lucrative option. The consulting, finance, and technology jobs that half of graduates pursue aren’t available everywhere. Perhaps this is why 58 percent of the Class of 2019 decided to live in California, New York, or Massachusetts after graduation.

While Harvard College strives to educate “citizen-leaders,” today’s low enthusiasm for government work is partially an institutional problem. When I open my inbox, I am greeted by emails about recruiting events for consulting firms far more often than emails about opportunities to work in government. Opportunities in the private sector create the image of a classic summer internship experience in New York. In final clubs’ predominantly rich circles, more than half of students choose consulting or finance. Students may find the earlier recruiting windows of consulting and finance comforting as their service-oriented peers wait to hear back from employers, sometimes as late as April or May.

Leadership is certainly not a quality cultivated only or always through a Harvard undergraduate education. While Ivy League graduates are generally overrepresented in corporate leadership, their presence does not amount to dominance. (Thank God.) But that is not an invitation for so many graduates to pursue such little public service in so few places.

In October 1963, President John F. Kennedy ’40 delivered his last major speech at Amherst College in Western Massachusetts. He told graduates, “Privilege is here, and with privilege goes responsibility.” Harvard overflows with privilege, and so it must share a disproportionate responsibility.

Before graduating, every student should deeply consider where they are needed most, what their responsibility is, and in which community they can best fulfill that civic obligation. I ask, simply, that they consider serving — and leading — at home.

Noah D. Secondo ’22, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a joint History and Romance Languages & Literatures concentrator in Dunster House.