Shots in the Dark

In a Times of London essay called “Shot Where I Did My Laundry,” Harvard alum Alice Fishburn writes about the drug scene on campus.

My own naivety crumbled when I watched two friends enjoy a protracted moan about thesis stress in the Harvard library. One then reached into his jacket, pulled out an envelope and told the other to “pick the pill you want”.

…Drugs at Harvard are egalitarian. Cocaine crops up in the city-kid sets, cannabis is for the faux-slackers while Ritalin is favoured by overachievers.

What’s more, Fishburn argues, there’s a direct correlation between what it takes to get into Harvard and drug use.

We must realise that breeding grounds for brains are also Petri dishes for addictive personalities. You put neurotic individuals in a high-pressure environment. Then you add in the expectations of professors, families, their own egos and a public that holds them to a higher standard….

In other words, the current drug scandal isn’t some exceptional instance of life at Harvard; it’s a sine qua non of Cambridge culture.

That is one of the more radical ideas about the university I’ve heard in some time. I doubt it’s what Drew Faust had in mind when she called on students to think deeply about the shooting of Justin Cosby.

…the Chinese are turning to manta rays and eagle rays as filler for shark-fin soup, according to the Times of London.

Conservationists fear a falling shark population is prompting Asian chefs to look for manta and devil rays to help meet the voracious demand for shark fin soup.

Found in coastal waters throughout the world, rays present an easy target as they swim slowly near the surface with their huge wings. So far, they have escaped commercial exploitation and have been hunted only by small numbers of subsistence fishermen, who traditionally catch them using harpoons.

Rays are creatures of incredible beauty, and it’s horrifying to think of them being hunted by the voracious Chinese, especially for something as pointless as shark fin soup. (It’s supposed to be an aphrosidiac; it’s not. But alas, it’s become a status symbol.)

Manta rays swim slowly near the surface to feed (on plankton). Killing them couldn’t be easier, or more tragic.

China is purging the oceans of sharks and fish; destroying the planet’s climate; and sucking every last natural resource out of Africa, which will be a dried husk of a continent by the time China’s done with it.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world does nothing….

Harvard Magazine reports that executive v-p for finance Ed Forst is leaving Harvard.

This is interesting news indeed.

Forst was reputed to be a major player in Harvard’s response to the financial crisis, and I’d been told that Drew Faust was leaving much of the response to it in his hands.

Harvard Mag reports:

In a letter to the community announcing Forst’s departure, Faust wrote:

Ed Forst has decided to step down Aug. 1 as Harvard’s executive vice president in order to return to New York, his longtime home, and to the financial services industry, where he has spent nearly all of his distinguished career.

The full announcement throws a little BS in [emphasis added]:

Edward C. Forst has decided to step down as the University’s executive vice president as of Aug. 1, to return with his family to New York and to resume his career in the financial services industry.

We have heard the “spend more time with his family” excuse (here it’s an implication, but it’s there) before. I believe both instances equally.

Anyone know the real story?

This campaign (by a rival poet!) to smear Derek Walcott is really a bizarre and tawdry story. There’s even a Harvard connection.

The NY Post also runs a piece about Chanequa Campbell.

“I’m hurt and I’m confused,” Campbell told The Post last night. “For me not to be graduating is frustrating.

“Harvard is doing this to me because I’m black, I’m poor and I’m from Brooklyn.”

The Post has some info that might provide one explanation for why Harvard suspended Campbell.

Investigators suspect Campbell used her swipe card to help Cosby — who lived in Cambridge but did not attend the university — gain access to the locked dorm to sell drugs on campus, the sources said.

But Campbell insisted she doesn’t know Cosby. “I’ve never seen him before,” she said.

These stories are clearly irreconcilable, unless there’s some wiggle room in that verb “seen.” [But that verb might also be used to suggest that Campbell didn’t stand at the House door and swipe Cosby in.]

By the way, there was a suggestion below that Cosby’s attorney, Jeffrey Karp, is a “lousy lawyer.” Hard to tell whether he’s a good lawyer or not from what’s online, but here’s his website. A couple things emerge: A former prosecutor, he has trial experience and he knows the Massachusetts court system. A graduate of U-Mass with a J.D. from Northeastern, he may not be white-shoe, but it sounds like he knows how to play hardball and he has experience with the press.

“Harvard rushed to judgment,” he told the Boston Herald.

Chanequa Campbell, 21, is the Harvard Kirkland House senior whom Harvard has thrown off campus and banned from graduating. Now she’s speaking out, telling the Boston Globe that she had nothing to do with the murder of Justin Cosby and that Harvard’s actions may be motivated by racism.

Asked why she believes Harvard administrators took the actions they did, she said she was not making an “overall claim of racism,” but “I do believe I am being singled out. . . . The honest answer to that is that I’m black and I’m poor and I’m from New York and I walk a certain way and I keep my clothes a certain way,” she said. “It’s something that labels me as different from everyone else.”

In other words: Harvard, you’ll be hearing from my lawyer.

(Campbell, who comes from Bed-Stuy, organized an event called “Black Tees for Black History” during Black History Month.)

The Sox trounced the Mets, 12-5, yesterday, but Ortiz did not disappoint: He went 0-5. I saw him bat against a Mets pitcher who was so bad that he actually dropped the ball as he went into his windup.

(Two firsts for me to have seen in baseball this season: a player stealing home, as Jacob Ellsbury did against the Yanks, and a pitcher drop the ball as he started to throw.)

Ortiz struck out anyway…

Will Terry Francona, as Dan Shaughnessy suggests, send Ortiz to the minors? The question is irrelevant. We all know what Ortiz’s problem is, and it isn’t his swing….

The Times’ David Carr reports on the newsweekly’s latest attempt to redefine itself. Here’s the crucial stuff, which Carr is merciful enough to bury near the end of his piece.

In an interview with Charlie Rose on Wednesday, Mr. Meacham said that the changes are designed to appeal to people whom he described as a “virtual Beltway,” people who do not live in those confines, but “are part of that sensibility.” He suggested that people who watch Charlie Rose, buy hardcovers and have an interest in history are a more rarefied group that may pay more for his magazine and be more attractive to advertisers.

…(The magazine features so much of Mr. Meacham’s policy-loving sensibility and work — he recently won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Andrew Jackson — that it might have thought of taking reinvention one more step and calling the magazine Meacham.)

People who watch Charlie Rose, buy hardcovers, and have an interest in history… In theory, I’m in favor of all these things, but for some reason this combination, as voiced by Jon Meacham, sounds incredibly dreary to me. Also: twee.

I mean, can you think of a less successful business strategy than designing a mass-market magazine for people who watch Charlie Rose? There aren’t enough of them to fill a mini-market, much less a mass-market.

At the end of the day, as they say in Washington, Jon Meacham will have created a magazine that goes over well with the Harvard crowd. The chattering classes will talk it up, and then it will go out of business amidst great hyper-educated gnashing and wailing about the brutality of change. When in truth, it will deserve to have gone out of business.

After all, consider the first issue.

The wonky, government-centric DNA of the magazine is dominant in the new execution, which may have been the idea. The first redesigned issue includes an interview of President Obama by Mr. Meacham; a feature on the retired life of the last president; a look back at the last treasury chief; a profile of the speaker of the House; and a column byGeorge F. Will….

It must have taken them minutes to think of those story ideas….

The New York Post reports that the girlfriend of alleged killer Jabrai Jordan Copney is 22-year-old Brittany Smith, a Harvard senior.

An aspiring lawyer who majored in sociology and minored in African-American studies, Smith “is a very kind, intelligent girl,” a fellow student said.

“She is enormously grounded, and everyone is surprised that she is caught up in this.”

Like Copney, Smith is originally from Harlem, where she graduated from Frederick Douglass Academy, which was also attended by James Baldwin, Ozzie Davis, and the unfortunate Charlie Rangel. Among her other activities at Harvard, she appears to have been a basketball player (unless there’s another Brittany Smith). A resident of Lowell House, she was also a winner of the Mack Davis II Harvard College Award.

Smith is not the Kirkland House woman who has been kicked off campus and banned from graduation; no word on her identity. Crimson?

The Times reports: “Questions about Ortiz Grow as Numbers Fall.”

Never let it be said that the Times isn’t on top of the story!

The only time Ortiz connected off Santana, he did more damage to theRed Sox because he hit into a double play. The soft “Let’s go Papi!” chants died as soon as the Mets secured the second out. Then Ortiz removed his helmet near first base, lowered his head again and vanished into the dugout again.

In what must have been a conscious—but I think is wrong—editorial decision, there’s no mention of steroids in the article.

I titled an earlier post on this subject, “Should David Ortiz Retire”? At the time, I was mostly kidding.

Now, I’m not so sure anymore.