Advertisement

Phi Beta Kappa: Who Needs It?

Unfortunately, even if, behind locked doors, they admit to each other the weaknesses of grades as measures of intellect, academics are still likely to select as outstanding that which elevated them to their present high position: namely, academic prowess.

But, I believe, the University already offers enough carrots to the donkey of academic achievement. There are Detur prizes and scholarships; programs for Honors candidates which ration out contact with the faculty to the blessed only; and summas, magnas, and cums.

Realizing this, several undergraduate PBK members have suggested abolishing the chapter. However, Harvard's chapter was founded in 1781; Harvard institutions never die, they just become toxic. So this proposal is impracticable.

Letting the chapter atrophy of its own uselessness would be all right if election were merely on the basis of grades. However, since other criteria are used erratically, elections become irrational, and perhaps even pernicious in their effects.

Some Modest Proposals

Advertisement

There is a function which no Harvard institution serves, and that is to encourage intellectual breadth. Mr. Pusey, I hope, had in mind that good use of the intellect includes more than applying it to curriculum, and that PBK might reward this broader use.

How to save this idea from hopeless vagueness? Three obvious steps might be easily implemented. All three would make the criteria of election less a checklist and more an evaluation of overall intellectual capacity. These suggestions would make elections harder, not easier, but perhaps would also make them worth the trouble.

First, PBK should explicitly and consistently encourage breadth of academic endeavor. The electors are often faced with choosing between the all-A physicist and one who has gotten all A's and a B in a history course. Since they may be assured that the physics department will reward the all-A man, they should make PBK one place (and it would be the only place in the College) where the experimenter is rewarded.

Second, PBK should construct the requirement of "good character" broadly enough to include extracurricular activities which reveal intellectual capacities well employed. Good acting, good writing, good artwork and music-making, good politicking, and good service of one's fellows, can all be evidence at least as clear as a cipher in the registrar's office.

The electors could easily recognize that some activities are no more a sign of intellectual capacity than an A in Chemistry 20. They would compare not activity per se, but the quality of performance in extracurricular interest: writing, even if not for a magazine; performing, even if not with a group.

Third, PBK should make sure that an elector concentrating in the candidates field and another elector in the candidate's House talk with each candidate about his interests before the elections of the Eight and Sixteen. Unless a candidate leads his class, if no one in PBK knows him he is at a severe disadvantage. Perhaps he is doing independent work, connected with or unrelated to his field, that not even his tutor knows about. Perhaps his tutor doesn't know him, as is usually the case with mathematicians. On the other hand perhaps he studies nothing but Serbo-Croatian, his major, all day and all night and has an IQ of 105.

PBK could preserve the secrecy which traditionally surrounds its elections by telling electors in advance just the names of the one or two people they are to interview. It could prevent the interviews (ideally, din-

Advertisement