Cantab Year in Review: falling apart at the seams

Ah...the Cantab Year in Review. Admittedly, a lot of shady stuff went down at Yale last year, but looking back at Harvard's 1999 reveals some curious parallels to events of recent Eli infamy. It's a little like looking into a funhouse mirror that makes you appear fat, twisted, and ugly. Only then do you realize—gazing into the evil mirror was a big, big mistake.

Fat

While Yalies are content whining about Berkeley's elitist transfer policy, Cantabs, in typically overwrought fashion, pulled out the heavy artillery on behalf of their stomachs. When Harvard's Adams House dining hall began using ID card stickers to exclude outsiders from eating their chipwich sandwiches, members of Pforzheimer House didn't stop at just griping—they challenged Adams House to a six-day battle consisting of a football game, a tug-of-war, and a musical theater presentation. If Adams House lost the contest, they would be forced to give up the use of their dining hall gong (which Adamsers strike whenever they detect a dining hall interloper); a Pforzheimer loss would cause them to relinquish the use of the "Pf" in their name. After triumphing in the final contest—a drag show—the "Pfo-hos" won the right to eat in the Adams dining hall.

One can only be grateful that there are no genuine sources of excitement in Cambridge, considering all the problems their dining halls generate. As well as being open to students for cereal and soda throughout the night, next year Harvard plans to serve a late night fourth meal in its dining halls. The Harvard Crimson ran an earnest editorial gushing that students could now have "healthy snacks instead of pizza runs." Tell that to the Harvard frosh who started a fire one night in the Weld House dining hall cooking s'mores in the toaster oven—firefighters brandishing axes and gas masks stormed in and confiscated the charred morsel.

Twisted

While Master Lasaga's cyber-kiddies may have been a source of embarrasment for Elis, it's clear that the folks at Harvard are even more apt to be electronically aroused. As the year began, Harvard students were still reeling over the case of former "Divinity" School Dean Ronald Thiemann, who was forced to resign from his post last spring after pornography was found on his office computer. When Thiemann asked computer technicians for help in downloading his files, they noticed that many of the sites he was downloading from had names like "hotsteamy-sex.com."

But Harvard undergrads dug even deeper for techno-stimulation. "From the day the course book arrives at my doorstep," wrote Adam Arenson in a Thurs., Sept. 30 opinion piece for the Crimson. "I read it cover to cover, pen in hand, marking a complex pattern of courses and their relative rank. I create a database which I sort by semester, exam group, Core, concentration or elective credit, of literally hundreds of courses. I boil down to a final list and hit the ground running during shopping period, optimizing the perfect schedule." Dork.

Ugly

Since Harvard students are feverishly holed up in their rooms data-crunching their courses, they have even less time for romance than Yalies do. In a student-life survey conducted in September, the Crimson found that only about two-thirds of Cantabs had been in a romantic relationship lasting more than a week. We assume this majority excludes Arenson.

Oops

Taking after students who mistakenly choose Harvard over Yale, the Cantab admissions office seems to have let a big one slip by. On Mon., Nov. 8, Harvard discovered that supposed sophomore Edward Meinert had conned his friends and colleagues—he was facing a Federal prison sentence for defrauding a bank. Oh, and he wasn't actually an undergraduate after all.

Yet when it comes down to it, Harvard students are really just like us. Well, except for their commando-style eating habits, course-mapping fanaticism, and no-longevity-having couples scene. Come to think of it, they're not like us at all, especially since they're going to get their asses kicked at The Game.

Graphic by Karen Rosenberg.

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