It turns out that the Harvard University has been abuzz over a construction sign erected on campus. The sign encouraged the workers to be respectful of the students and professors of the university and abstain from swearing, making loud noises, and taking drugs and / or alcohol. The students protested and the sign was removed:
Sandra Y. L. Korn ’14 called the sign “ridiculous” and said that it made her uncomfortable because it was “patronizing and patriarchal” towards the construction workers. “It sets up Harvard as some sort of exceptional place where no one can swear because they are defiling the purity of Harvard,” said Korn, a Crimson editorial editor. Avinaash Subramaniam ’14 said that he was “shocked” by the sign and that it held workers to a different standard than Harvard students.
Of course, to be completely honest, there is a huge difference between the workers and the students on campus. The former are paid for being there while the latter pay huge sums of money to do so. This is something that the earnest little undergrads don’t seem to understand:
Avinaash Subramaniam ’14 said that he was “shocked” by the sign and that it held workers to a different standard than Harvard students.
“There are students who drink and smoke at Harvard and the final clubs blast music late at night,” he said. “How is it any less wrong when Harvard students do drugs?”
When this student graduates and finds himself in the workplace, I hope it doesn’t come as too much of a shock that his customers, clients, students, patients, etc. will have a lot more rights in his workplace than he will.
What I find especially cute about the article is how well the students pretend not to know why they even are at Harvard:
Although the University did not put up the sign, Divinity School student Hanna L. Hofheinz said it bears equal responsibility for the sign’s message.
“I think that the sign was expressive of class and social dynamics that too often are part of the Harvard ethos,” she said. “I expect more from Harvard than to allow this type of statement to be its public face.”
As if there was any reason to shell out huge sums of money to go to an Ivy League institution than a hysteric fear of downward social mobility. You don;t go to such places for an education per se. For the most part, you’ll be taught by bored and indifferent grad students, anyways, and not by actual professors. The only reason of going there is to meet the right sort of people. If you are not into that, you’ll waste your time and money.
The reason why I quote this article here is that when I was a student at my Ivy, the attitudes evinced by these students were precisely what drove me nuts. I could have put up with the low quality of instruction, with the rigid hierarchies, with snobbery, with being surrounded by “legacies” with no interest whatsoever in studying, with endless discussions of who bought what when and where, with very little intellectual stimulation. But it’s the annoying earnestness of these rich kids who go around quoting Marx and blabbing about social equality and class struggle that got to me.
“There is no difference between me and a truck driver because we are both working people,” a spoiled Pappa’s boy who spent his summer holidays traveling the world on his parents’ money at the age of 35 told me. Is anybody surprised that I had a major depression at the end of my schooling in such an environment?
Clarissa's Blog 
A lot of kids that go to Harvard are naivr and idealistic and think they are getting the best education in the country, even if it isn’t true, and plenty of them are there for learning, rather than “meeting the right people”.
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Jaime and I were just discussing Harvard yesterday, because she’s considering getting a PhD in the Humanities, specifically, History of Science, after finishing her physics master’s, and one of her professors she discussed this with offered up Harvard as the top choice. Boston is a beautiful city, but we both are concerned with how we’d clash with “Harvard culture”, and its impact on our mental health.
We did joke, however, that the dazzle and glamour associated with a Harvard PhD might be enough to get my mother to start reconsidering our relationship in a more positive light, but that’s, realistically, not good enough of a reason to pick a university. 😉
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I took me four years to (almost) get used to the Ivy League culture when I was a PhD student. The only thing that kept me alive was a couple of wonderful people I have met there who became friends, and knowing that at the end I would receive a piece of paper with a symbolic importance.
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“The only thing that kept me alive was a couple of wonderful people I have met there who became friends”
– What a coincidence! Me, too! 🙂 🙂 If it weren’t for my intellectual conversations with you, I’d wither and die back there.
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When I was a foreign grad student in an Ivy League Univ. I received a little booklet with advices on how to behave in the United States. One of the advices was to never spit in the streets, as American people find it very offensive. Then I found out that the undergraduate student at that specific Ivy League Univ. spit in the streets all the time.
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There are still laws in a lot of US towns against public spitting. I’m surprised they allow it around Harvard but oh I forgot “the rich are different from you and me.”
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Why would people want to spit at all?
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Refrain from swearing and drinking around college students? What?
(The only reason I can think of to do this is if you don’t want to be outdone in these areas of endeavor by the aforementioned spoiled papa’s and mama’s boys and girls).
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I have no experience with Ivy schools — just Ivy envy. Almost all of my professors at my PhD institution came from Ivies, though, and they were mostly disengaged and resentful of having to teach a 3/2. Sucks to be them. But at least I was being taught by full-time faculty, I guess. I don’t know — all my silver linings have dark clouds.
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If my experience is anything to go by, you haven’t missed anything by not going there. Oh and working there as your first professorial job! That’s just horrible. What they do to young scholars – brrrr!
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My respect for Harvard is on a case-by-case basis. I had a lot of respect for Harvard when they tried to keep military recruiters off campus because of DADT. I had a lot of disrespect for Harvard for having Lawrence Summers as its president. I guess that particular disrespect has been transferred to the Obama election, but it’s election year again, so I’m keeping that particular attitude of disrespect to myself, for the most part. 🙂
As for the signage, in the Illuminatus! trilogy, protagonist Markoff Chaney practices a form of guerrilla theatre or subvertising involving signage in places of business, of the type singed ‘The Mgt.’ In one caper, he replaces a sign that says ‘NO SMOKING – THE MGT.’ with one that says ‘NO SMOKING – NO SPITTING – THE MGT. The text speaks for itself:
For me, this case doesn’t go on the respect ledger or the disrespect ledger. I don’t think either side of the controversy, if this even is one, is being entirely rational.
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election->administration
Score one (but only one) for blogger.com…
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There are reasons to respect Harvard. I never went to an Ivy League school, though, and what I have experienced of élite private schools generally makes me very grateful that I did not.
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Does it matter what very young people think? At first I thought their ages were being quoted as “14”. Then I figured out that must be their intended graduation date.
When Dambudzo Marechera was expelled from the University of Rhodesia, for his vandalism (intended as a political statement), two white students sheltered him at their house, where he drank all their beer as a token of thanks.
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Yeah, I know, they’ll get over it. Except those who will go to grad school and stay there until 40 despising everybody who actually works for a living. I’m sorry to be grumpy but this is a place where I have a trauma.
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I only know of the lumpen prole attitude of refusing to work for a living. Marechera took great advantage of white liberals, reading and then reselling his professors’ books and so on. He then took up the life of a vagrant and illegal immigrant. He actually despised liberalism because of its paternalism. He wanted to be a revolutionary. So, he broke the windows of the Africa Centre in London, to protest (something). He turned their tables over, because he said it was not really Africa that was celebrated there, but the place was a little incubation zone for non-racial attitudes.
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“There is no difference between me and a truck driver because we are both working people,”
How many Marxists have actually spent any time with the proletariat? And if they were forced to live among them how long do you think it would take them to lose their Marxism?
Not that it matters, as their income (and future income) decreases and the blue collar’s increases they will get a chance to find out.
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“How many Marxists have actually spent any time with the proletariat?”
– I’m sure they have their servants, gardeners, etc.
“And if they were forced to live among them how long do you think it would take them to lose their Marxism?”
– Live as equals, you mean? All of a couple of hours, I guess. 🙂
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I for one am happy about the drinking/drug thing. Regardless of location, I am sick to death of watching construction workers drinking cocktails and blowing joints before staggering around trying to build something.
Surely we can all agree on this?
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