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To the Editor of the Crimson:
I was much interested in a recent editorial regarding the possibilities of a Class Dance. What especially attracted my attention was the suggestion that such an affair might smack of Joe College.
It seems to me that such criticism of collegiate functions and activities has been entirely too much overdone at Harvard. We are normal individuals, not prepossessed of a superior or supercilious attitude toward the antics of our fellow students of other schools in general. WE are neither children to follow the rowdy trend, nor prematurely old, to withdraw completely. The Harvard group may be heterogeneous, and we are proud of it and attempt to become more representative of the U.S., but anyone of us might have fitted into the so called "Joe College" life at Cornell or Pennsylvania, for example. There is no reason why a Harvardian should experience the feeling that within limits, the normal activities of any college are beyond him.
During late years we have cheered at our football games, watched our cheer leader essay a few cautious "flips", and we even went so far as to hold a football "pep" rally (horrors!) to show the team our support. A few years back the Harvard riots were thing to be talked about. These are all Joe College activities, and yet we have never stigmatized them by that appellation. they constitute an example of Harvard's regeneration from a played-up, highly publicized and dramatized, artificial indifference which is not nearly so fundamental as we are led to believe. In a good many cases Harvard's "indifference" is laudable, but perhaps of late it has been made too all-inclusive to be wholesome.
So in discussing the Class Dance question, let's keep "Joe College" out of the picture. We want no rah-rah affair, but there is nothing to prove that a Junior Prom week-end at Harvard would take on the aspect of a University of Miami brawl. Hobart A. Lerner '40
