One Tuesday in October, eleven years ago, Lowell House announced its dining hall would be open 24 hours a day. On Wednesday, the space was damaged. The mess was not unexpected, but it was certainly dismaying to administrators and students hoping to create social study space in the heart of a campus home. More than a disappointment, though, the dining hall detritus seemed to indicate the fracturing of the social contract brokered just a short time before.
In many ways, Harvard has changed since that October. The early action admissions process was eliminated—and restored. Media sources have picked apart Occupy Harvard, the Economics 10 walkout, Government 1310’s cheating scandal, and grade inflation. Drew Faust as president, ROTC’s return, expansion into Allston, and a move toward gender neutral housing: these, too, are Harvard’s recent past. In the last decade, the campus has grown and struggled, been condemned and lauded.
Yet still more change must come. In particular, it’s time to reframe the relationship between students, faculty, and administrators not as an “us vs. them” dichotomy but instead as a partnership. Discord, demand, and disobedience are not efficient or productive, especially not at an institution centered on the pursuit of Veritas—truth, by way of edification. At the end of the day, Harvard is a place of learning, and the question now is what we will learn in the next decade.
Hopefully, the lesson will be a familiar and welcome one: that we, as a university community, must work harder at trusting one another and making good on that collective trust. The social contracts we rarely articulate must hold. When we come to Harvard, we trust that our students are bright and eager, we trust that our professors are dedicated and passionate, and we trust that our administrators will always find the best course of action. We trust in the value of a degree, of tenure, and of this unique education.
This trust is not blind hope. For almost four centuries, Harvard and its constituents have served and supported one another—not in every circumstance, but in most. During those times when we fail or are less than perfect, we try to improve and usually do. We can and must ever challenge ourselves to be better, and there is no question that obstacles remain. But as we look forward, it seems that the faith that we can meet those challenges hinges on what we are willing to entrust to each other.
Think of the creation, acceptance, and implementation of an honor code, which seeks to build a stronger community focused on educational reciprocity and bound together by the pursuit of a greater and nobler truth—but which cannot exist without a foundation of trust.
Think of the Undergraduate Council’s campaign for an additional $250,000 in student organization funding, still an ongoing endeavor. The university administration must trust that clubs will utilize the monies responsibly, and it is certainly the student body’s hope that they will.
Think of the new class of Harvard students who will come to Cambridge in the fall, who, as diverse as they are, are united by trepidation and eagerness and the fact they have entrusted their next four years to us.
Eleven years ago in October, despite the trash left in the Lowell dining hall, a senior tutor in the house wrote that the incident would “not affect our commitment to leave the dining hall open.” That tutor, Jay Ellison, is now the secretary of the Ad Board, and Harvard’s dining halls continue to welcome students all hours of the night. There is an unspoken trust that they will not close and they will not be damaged.
Some aspects of Harvard might never change: how piled snow breaks from Emerson’s eaves, how tourists continue to rub John Harvard’s foot, and how none of the pathways across Tercentenary Theatre will take a hurrying student directly to his next class. I hope, too, that this current Harvard community and the ones to come will always be willing to trust one another. I hope the dining halls will always be open.