I think 'whatever I can get' is a standard option you can choose under the "looking for" question. One sees it a lot on these pages.

Moreover, the total number of pictures indicates how many pictures have been 'flagged' (by anyone) to include Mr. Yale. He doesn't need to have uploaded any pics of himself to get to that number.

It would be easy for Mr. Yale to change his privacy settings so only his 'friends' can see his page. Who will send him the friendly e-mail suggesting that he do so?

The examples given in the article are throwaway lines pulled from the context of forty minutes of patter and tourist factoids, and seem pretty innocuous at that (Harvard has student organizations? shocking!). No story here.

I do, however, happen to think that there should be no Republicans at Harvard at this point.

Or anywhere else.

SE
 

"Whatever I can get" is a standard option, yes. And mea culpa on the photos thing.

As for the privacy issue—well, it's an important one, isn't it? Privacy seems to mean different things to different generations, and of course if you only allow your "friends" on Facebook to see you, that defeats half the purpose.

I disagree that the lines are throwaways; they are clearly examples used to reflect a general impression left by the tour guide. The author also takes pains to note everything interesting that Yale did *not* mention.

And yes, SE, your feelings about Republicans are pretty well-known by this point.
 

I used to have his job (more than ten years ago) and there was absolutely no training and very little oversight. For the most part, they seemed to choose talkative, personable types. The usual crowd on the tour consisted of tourists, many not English speaking, and few seemed interested in descriptions of the Ruskinian neo-gothic and polychrome masonry of Memorial Hall . . . . Telling the story of the tower burning down and then pointing out the fire station next door got better reactions. Standing in Memorial Hall was one of the few moments when the group was out of the sun and not in difficult windy acoustics. So it was a great place to talk about non-Mem hall related things: I used to take that time to first talk about the many orchestras (not just one!), choirs, a cappella groups, bands, Gilbert and Sullivan, etc., and all the many other activities that students were involved in.

The audience was generally a tough crowd. So I think we all hammed it up a bit. The most successful students who worked with me were also at the Lampoon. Not a bad fit because most of the questions I got were about celebrities, actors and the Princess of Japan. So I ended up just offering up those facts, too, since invariably someone asked . . .

I remember that those taking the tour were rarely interested in architecture and history, but were interested in current student life and in the tour guide as an example of a "Harvard" student. Somewhere in Japan there must be dozens of photographs with me in them (a picture of a live Harvard student!). (Surely I'm not responsible if they end up on Facebook?)

Point out Gund Hall? She's got to be kidding. (It's also not really on the walking route.) I did always mention the Carpenter Ctr. as the only building in North America by le Corbusier. And it was standard to mention the Fogg and the glass flowers at the Peabody as other things to do "if you have time." Few tourists seemed to have scheduled more time in the square than the hour for the tour though.

This tour sounds pretty awful at points. But I can see how a tour guide would be tempted to present above all a "humanized" example of a Harvard student.

And if you could make your group fall in love with your charm? that could mean good tips. Maybe that's what this "adorable" "business" major had in mind.
 

RB, you didn't erase your own Facebook profile after this did you?
 

Very well put, SE - good to pull the dogs off a bit point by point. This is a young student, after all. You do throw in your obligatory GOP shot at the end, which often sound silly in light of your other well-bolstered opinions (though you've clearly bolstered them at times), but your posts still remain well worth reading despite the ever present - and often irrelevant to the thread - Bush-bashing post scripts.
 

You do have to wonder about this guy. There is, of course, no undergraduate business program at Harvard, not even an accounting course. And while Harvard students and alumni do sometimes use the conventional terms when Harvard's are unique (saying "major" instead of "concentration" and "political science" instead of "government") never in my life have I head a Harvard student refer to himself as a "business major." It's one thing to act like you go to the University of Texas, it's another to pretend you go to Bentley!
 

5:42,

I looked at the actual article, because based on Richard's post your post made no sense. The kid doesn't say he's a business major -- only the REPORTER does. (In fact, the kid on his Facebook page, according to Richard, calls himself an Ec concentrator.)

The mistake you replicated here casts further doubt on the reporter's scrupulousness in taking notes. There's a couple other small gaffes in her article -- for example, the belief that a student might believe Mass Hall dorm is for nerds (the rooms are of course more or less randomly assigned); or that 'much' of the Widener stacks are underground (I would guess only C and D levels are actually underground, as A and B are below the top of those big sledding stairs and 1 through 5 are above them).

Richard notes that the reporter lists lots of things the kid didn't mention, but so what? You could give sixty tours of really interesting things. (The cummings gaffe was embarrassing of course.) The reporter certainly doesn't go out of her way to acknowledge that he said a thing or two worth hearing; she's a classic cherry-picker.

One other small thing: the only thing interesting about the interior of the Science Center is *indeed* the napping in the Cabot Library -- it used to be until a couple years ago the only library on campus that was open all night during finals.

No story here. Kid might be a jackass, but no anti-intellectualism is proven. Hell, the guy went out of his way to play a pipe organ for kicks.



Also, 5:42, Harvard students can get credit for an Accounting course taken at MIT.

SE
 

Okay, I do recall now that they pick kids who identify as relatively quiet for Mass Hall. But it's not 'highly select.'
 

SE, I suspect that Canadian for "econ concentrator" is "business major"—in other words, there was some editorial translation involved, perhaps by the editor of the piece.

You might disagree with the reporter's conclusion, but I don't think anything here really casts doubt on her note-taking.
 

5:42 here. For heavens sake, Richard, in Canada they know the difference between business and economics. Like it would be fine for the reporter to refer to Ben Friedman and Caroline Hoxby as having been business majors at Harvard, to be sure those aliens up there would know what she was talking about? Good for you, SE, to note that it was the reporter, not the student, who used that term.

The deeper point here is that the Harvard that "Yale" describes is just the way the new Harvard College would like itself known--a fun place with a pub and a big state fair in the fall where you can throw baseballs and dunk the deans, right in the middle of Harvard Yard. "Yale" is only projecting the image of Harvard that the Harvard administration promoted. The story is evidence of the success of its branding program!
 

Can't put anything by those Canadians, is that what you're saying? Nonetheless, I still suspect it was an editing error. Obviously Yale wouldn't have said business—perhaps he said he hopes to go into business, or something—and the switch from econ to business in the reporter's story feels deliberate. In any event, it's a minor point that doesn't go to the larger question of whether the reporter's portrayal of the tour was substantively correct.

I think your second point is on the money.
 

"I still suspect it was an editing error."
"perhaps he said he hopes to go into business"

Well, which is it? Make up your mind. Pretty weak argumentation there, Richard.



As much as I deplore the branding Harvard has been doing, I still think there's not enough evidence here to accuse the tour office of anti-intellectualism. Fundamentally, a campus tour can be focused on history or student life. (It shouldn't be about the curriculum -- why walk around to hear about that?) And history isn't the thing that makes people want to come to the school.

On the other hand, if student life were more intellectually focused, we could get the best of both worlds. How about pipe organs in every House! Or -- how about this? -- professors!!

In other words, it's not Harvard's intellectual reputation that's being neglected, it's the undergraduate reality. And that's not a curriculum matter, it's a campus culture matter.

Standing Eagle
 

Interesting point, SE.
 

The tour that's being described, out of the Information Center, is for tourists and is different from the tours that are run for prospective students (Crimson Key tours). Regardless of how typical this tour was, or how accurate the account, I don't think it is quite fair to draw conclusions from the Information Center tours about how Harvard wants to market itself to prospective students.
 

Yale was also probably competing at least in his own head with the unofficial tours run by Harvard students:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hahvahd_tour

I've heard some of their spiels en passant and they're pretty sophomoric too. The whole campus tour thing, whether sanctioned by Admissions Depts or not, are a sorry phenomenon, a sad manifestation of the branding and marketing of Colleges.
 

Well said at 10:40, Standing Eagle.

I might add that Adams House does have a pipe organ. . .
 

05er, when will you respond to my thoughts about the IOP?
 

History isn't a reason people come to the school? Isn't history one of Harvard's main selling points?

I think the debate over business major / economics concentrator is less relevant than the reality that this article hints at: There's a major section of the Harvard population that is pathologically anti-intellectual, or at least pathological about seeming to be anti-intellectual. This group includes athletes, who could not have gotten in based on grades, and self-loathing nerds. There's a massive inferiority complex, ironically, at the College; people go out of their way to seem like 'normal' college kids, but as a result appear to be trying too hard. (Enter 'Yale,' if that's his real name.)

Also, as Yale should know, the reason that the third book is upside down is not that 'us Harvard dudes and dudettes need to relax!' The first and second books represent the Old and New Testaments, and the third represents the book of revelation, which is upside down because it includes what God has yet to reveal. And basically everyone knows that. (I guess it's not so surprising that Yale doesn't.)