Radcliffe College - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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themselves. It is ironic that Harvard evidently expects its students to learn this important piece of wisdom by themselves. Hopefully, help and encouragement for the discouraged student might be provided by informal student-faculty contacts. This is rarely the case, and amounts to a double tragedy: not only is the student left to fend for himself, but the quality of academic intercourse is impaired. Theoretically, tutorial and the House system provide the personal contact and intimacy to countervail the size and impersonality of the University. In practice, however, the Houses, with an average population of over 400 students per house, have become little more than overcrowded dormitories. The opposition to House courses on the part of conservative members of the Faculty illustrates that even the administration basically conceives of the Houses as fancy dormitories. Most people now recognize that the central issue behind the parietal uproar is not “longer sex hours, nor even democracy for the sake of democracy, but rather that there would be a much greater chance of student involvement with the House community were the Houses to be self-regulating. However, because ultimate responsibility for governing the House falls upon the Master, not the students, and because of mundane things such as limited budgets (Houses are totally self-supporting, in contrast to Yale's Colleges), more and more students leave the Houses to live off campus. There is no excuse for such bumbling waste of what might be Harvard's most desirable feature. Tutorial has worked out slightly better. Here, at least, the student has the opportunity to meet his instructor on a relatively individual basis. When difficulties do arise, they usually stem from either the tutor's not being interested in his student (most tutors are graduate students pursuing their own studies) or from the fact that students simply do not know how to behave in a one-to-one classroom situation. Despite the occasional successes of Tutorial and the Houses, most students consider Harvard a lonely, impersonal place. There is little or no sense of community, which is regrettable, for it is in community that one is able to learn and share with others on a personal basis; it is in community that one finds relevance and immediacy in education; and it is only in community that a college can flourish. Considering the lack of community, the increase in students who feel alienated from Harvard is not surprising. Now that the possibility of leaving is temporarily closed, the student who might otherwise have left will be around to voice his discontent. If self-criticism is a virtue, then perhaps the draft will have served Harvard well. Harvard, as well as every other American college, is caught in a difficult situation. It has to abandon its traditional function of professional training, which is being taken over by graduate schools, and to find a new role for itself in American society. That the college will have a role is inevitable. Being convinced of the importance of a college education, the American people will continue to encourage their sons and daughters to take advantage of it. It is not difficult to envision a college which does raise the level of our society. For this to happen, there must be a radical and thorough reorientation in the sorts of things colleges do. Many men may be capable of advanced thought, but few are academics. While it is not too soon for Harvard to consider what its new role in society should be, it may be too much to expect that it will. The draft is only temporary; even now some students are leaving, unwilling to endure any longer what they consider to be a purposeless grind. The frank, radica) self-probing necessary to enact meaningful change may prove to be beyond the capacity of a community noted for its liberal cool. If this is the case. Harvard will be around for a long time to remind us of a glorious opportunity missed. — Jeffrey L. Elman

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Ill Admission, Chase Peterson, and to his predecessor, Fred Climp, that not only are the more able and creative members of this new student pool admitted to Harvard but that they arc sought out and encouraged to come. Board scores and academic brilliance arc of course considered, but selection is increasingly made on the basis of feel. II While Harvard's admissions policy has kept pace with the changing context of education in society, its educational policy has not. Most of the Harvard Faculty, trained at a time when college meant something vastly different than today, have difficulty in understanding just how radical those changes are. The commotion which followed President Posey's unfelicitous report to the Overseers this year illustrates that the problem is not simply one of lack of communication: there are very basic differences of opinion as to what a university should be like. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that so many of the students brought to Flarvard by a farsighted Admissions Office should be sorely disappointed after arriving in Cambridge. They soon find that the flowery rhetoric about General Education in the General Catalogue may be mostly wishful thinking. The College claims to look first of all to [the student's! life as a responsible human being and citizen, but its glances seem at best sidelong. The delicate balance between the University, dedicated to the advancement of knowledge, and the College, whose purpose is the development of the individual, is undelicately weighted in favor of the University, perhaps because no one really knows what the College should be doing. While these modern students are not the same kind of dedicated academics as their predecessors, it is wrong to think that they are anti-intellectual. To be sure, they resent the emphasis on professional training, on medieval scholasticism, and on ethereal abstractions; but this does not mean they are anti-intellectual any more than it means that the medieval scholastic is a true intellectual. The intellectuality of these students is one of personal and social relevance. They see around them a society which, for all its potential and promise, seems bent on destruction. As the presumed repository of society's knowledge and wisdom, it seems proper and fitting to them that the University ought to be concerned with salvaging what worthwhile remnants of society are left. Instead, they find a Harvard College which appears to have in no significant way changed from the Ivory Tower of the past. Only instead of an Ivory Tower, the university's protective wall is called value freedom. Technology, President Pusey explains, cannot be used to support an opinion. For this reason the administration did not permit television to broadcast a recent Vietnam teach-in. (He did not explain how the dissemination of opinions differs from the dissemination of information. Did he feel that the teach-in was totally devoid of any information whatsoever?) The renunciation of social obligation follows the same form, though the harm wreaked in this case is infinitely worse. Value freedom allows one to wallow in the mud without feeling soiled. What values Harvard does espouse are usually traditional ones. Tradition is in fact the premise to the General Education program. The ideal underlying Gen Ed is the traditional belief that appreciating the past will enable one to appreciate the present. Only recently have some members of the Harvard community, notably Winthrop House Master Bruce Chalmers, suggested that what is even more important than knowledge of the past is an understanding of the present; the former does not inevitably lead to the latter. Although the idea of learning from the past is appealing, there is a tendency for this kind of scholarship to be concerned with irrelevancies. If students today are less academic than previously, it is only in the sense of having little tolerance for the academics' habitual preoccupation with minutiae. It would be foolish not to recognize that many students — perhaps the majority at Harvard — are fairly content with the system as it operates. A large number not only intend to go on to graduate school, but see the College as a prep school for the University. This sort of student is almost ideally suited to the education Harvard is able to give him. The other kind of student, the one who feels discontented, has little alternative other than to get out. Despite all the courses in the Cencral Catalogue, despite all the extra-curricular activities, there is a surprising lack of genuine diversity in the education Harvard offers its students. Many disciplines are represented in the Faculty, and there's a shopping market glut of courses to choose from each term. But essentially, the courses and the Faculty are frighteningly alike: there is an assumption common to both that Harvard students come to their courses already intellectually motivated. Professors simply present the pertinent body of information — rarely is there an attempt to stimulate or to inspire. The only real variety at Harvard lies in its student body. This is Harvard's strength; it is also its weakness. Given such a heterogeneous student body, one would expect the College to provide a reasonable amount of flexibility, freedom, and opportunity for independence. Administrators are quick to point out that there is a minimum of rules and that almost any regulation can be broken under some circumstances. If a person is willing to scream and kick enough, he can get almost anything. Unfortunately for many students, there are even stronger forces which discourage their taking advantage of Harvard's freedom. The prospect of manipulating a system overgrown with 300 years of ivy can be overwhelming. It takes security and self-confidence to buck a school with Harvard's reputation. Few students are able to do this without some advice or prodding. The paucity of such help is what makes Harvard's flexibility uncomfortably rigid for a great many students. Harvard insists that it does no nursing job, but says that anyone who needs advice can readily get it if he wants to ferret it out. Here again, part of the claim is legitimate; advice can be gotten by those determined and sure enough of themselves to go out and seek it. The tragedy of the unhappy and confused student is that he rarely has the determination and confidence to seek help. Either the student is half-ashamed of his problem and doesn't want to admit its existence by seeking help, or else he's gone so far off the deep end that he cannot get help on his own initiative. This no-nursing attitude of the Deans and what Riesman calls the machismo of the Harvard student (seeing ourselves as self-sufficient Harvard Men ) operate to keep students from admitting that they have problems which they cannot solve themselves. Dr. Perry of the Bureau of Study Counsel claims that Harvard emphasizes self-sufficiency in order to avoid charges of paternalism from students resentful of an over-active counselling staff. This would seem to indicate that many students misunderstand the meaning of paternalism. Administrative paternalism — undue regulation of the college environment — is understandably and justifiably repugnant to students. But there can be another form of paternalism, and this seems to have completely escaped Flarvard. There is nothing wrong when a faculty, older and presumably wiser than students, advises and helps its students much as a father would his grown son. Much can be said for encouraging people to be independent, to work out their own problems — this is one way we develop self-confidence. On the other hand, we all must know our own limitations and realize there are times when it is not degrading to go to others for help. It is unfortunate that the general student view is so hostile to interference. Perry once said students had vet to learn that people can get help for themselves without getting it by

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HONOR THESES Most students consider the senior honors thesis the climax of undergraduate education at Harvard. In the fall, faculty members eulogize the glories of theses to awe-struck seniors who at the time see only the trauma and uncertainty of the effort rather than the glory of its completion. Despite procrastination all year and all-nighters the week before due-date, the majority of thesis writers manage to nurse their project to maturity. Was the effort worth it? For most the answer seems to be yes, even though there arc certain drawbacks. Few activities, academic or otherwise, are as physically and emotionally exhausting as thesis writing. This is in part a result of the size of the project, but it also stems from the fact that the most difficult problems in writing a thesis are those encountered first. Contemplating a thesis is dangerous, for at the start it appears as an intimidating 80-arm octopus; without jumping in right away, it is easy not to get started at all. Finding a workable and interesting topic is not easy, especially since many departments ask that theses be original and because of the practical consideration that sufficient research information must be available. After finding a topic, grueling, seemingly endless weeks of research follow. Having compiled quantities of data, the writer faces immense organizational problems in composing a first draft. But when he's doing the work, and not thinking about doing it, the going is smooth and sometimes enjoyable. A good thesis demands that his soul be put into it, but during spring vacation, after he's slept off his all-nighters of the week before, he knows he's accomplished something. The value of completing a thesis is usually great. Academically, it can be a superb experience. Most thesis writers for the first time are reversing their role in the educational process; they are no longer devouring the words and views of others, but arc developing a position or theory of their own. To do so, they must refine their own abilities of critical thinking and lucid writing. The chief rewards of a thesis come not as an intellectual exercise, however, but as a personal experience. Writing a thesis provides the student many insights into himself — his creative talents, his ability to organize himself, his ability to cope with pressure and strain. As a personal challenge, it can contribute greatly to the writer's character development, even if he intends never to write a page of scholarly prose again. At Harvard, however, there is a tendency, common among both faculty and students, to overestimate the importance of thesis writing. Too often the intellectual value of theses is overrated, their personal and emotional value underrated. As contributions to scholarship, relatively few theses are earthshaking, or even water-rippling. Only occasionally are they original; the large majority are products of methodical plodding. Neither are they necessarily difficult or time-consuming to write — summa theses have been produced from start to finish in four weeks. Most problems in writing arise simply from procrastina- tion, lack of personal organization, or fear of failure. Nonetheless, a popular mystique about the intellectual value of theses has been cultivated, and many seniors find themselves pressured into writing one, sometimes on topics they dislike. Some haggard thesis writers have even been accused of being un-scholarly and anti-intellectual for failure to show complete enthusiasm in doing their project. To some seniors, the thesis becomes not a privilege, but a requirement for graduation or graduate school, and these individuals are so intent upon getting it out of the way that they have less chance to enjoy it and to develop personally from it. Such a situation is unfortunate, since it merely adds another academic pressure to the already overburdened student. In light of events of the past year, not only do theses seem overplayed, but, to some students, irrelevant and inconsequential as well. One senior commented, With all the killing going on in Vietnam, early American literature just doesn't seem so important to me. If I could. I'd drop my thesis and work fulltime for McCarthy. While this particular senior did not drop his thesis, many others this year did. The number of dropped theses this year rose sharply over past years; in some departments, as many as a third of those starting theses did not complete them. Many factors contributed to this situation, but the predominant reason seems to have been the preference for anti-war activities over what some seniors regarded as academic trivia. There would be cause for alarm if the war had not made so many seniors regard theses as relatively unimportant. Unfortunately, the war has led some people to over-react against theses. Fear of the draft has caused some seniors to substitute for thesis writing not politics, but inactivity: one senior said, If I wrote a thesis, I could graduate magna. However, even if I received a summa, I still couldn't go to graduate school next year. I may as well not write a thesis and enjoy my senior year. This rising attention to non-academic problems has also driven some students to challenge the importance of pure scholarship itself. Such are but two of the pernicious effects of an unpopular war. For the majority of students, the war does not reduce thesis writing to irrelevancy any more than the claims of some professors make it an academic necessity. It is important to realize that thesis-writing is a highly personal matter: some students may spend their time more profitably in other activities, yet the fact remains that for many individuals thesis writing can be intellectually rewarding, war-time or not, and that for scholars it is intellectually crucial. In any case, the thesis' main purpose should be the writer's personal development; and, as such, the thesis is only one way — but an excellent one — to promote this. — Kenneth M. Ludmerer