Some people are going crazy at Harvard. Those who really flip out end up in Stillman or McLean's. But others, not quite mad enough, have to hang around here until they freak out and someone notices.

Those people-those who are waiting for that draft-free vacation in the sky-are often hard to find. You may not know any of them. You should.

I

IN THE living room of a suite in Kirkland House there is an armchair. That is where Doug sits-indeed, that is where Doug lives. It is an old chair, an uncomfortable chair, a smelly chair (a drunken kid from across the hall pissed on it once)-but Doug doesn't care. Why should he?

"The way I see it," he said a few weeks ago, "there's nothing much going on outside this room worth doing. Hell, I have four roommates-there's always something happening around here that I can do. Ted'll come in and put on a record, and I can listen to that. Or Dixon'll come in and get stoned with some friends, and I can get high. You know, someone will turn on the TV. Something like that."

He took a pack of cigarettes from the carton in his lap, took a cigarette from the pack and lit it. "It's a good thing too-that something's always happening here. I mean, I just don't have much energy these days. Just doesn't seem to be any reason why I should start anything on my own. Shit, I haven't put a record on myself since last year."

Doug reads a lot. He can't do the reading for his courses-he is never up in time to go to a class to get a reading list-but there is other stuff to read. Someone will leave a book on the coffee table, and, if it stays there long enough, Doug will eventually pick it up and read it. Last week he read a sci-fi novel, Thomas Berger's Little Big Man, a collection of Doald Barthelme short stories and a cookbook.

"That cookbook made me hungry," he said.

IT WASN'T always this way. Doug came to Harvard like most other people-the pride of his large public high school, semi-athletic, a go-getter, eager to learn about the cinema. But, during freshman year, he began to notice the audacity, and even stupidity, of certain demands Harvard made on him. When his expose section man asked for a paper comparing Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Flies, Doug wrote mainly about the covers ("One is red with white type, one is white with red type..."), and the section man nearly flunked him. Soon Doug started to miss hour exams, write papers on the wrong topics, and fill in courses incorrectly on his study card.

He had girl problems too. He wrote letters to his two girl friends back home and inadvertently reversed the addresses on the envelopes. Both girls responded with "Dear John" letters, and Doug is now planning to take these and other "Dear John's" he has collected through the years and turn them into a book.

"That's my big project," he says. "They're all so funny. One girl, Cathy, wrote me this whole long four-page letter and added the "Dear John" part as a P.S."

After the girls from home busted up with him, Doug turned to film and politics. He went to a dozen movies a week, bought lots of film books, and occasionally attended SDS meetings at night. As a result, he landed on academic probation, was busted at University Hal and is in debt $300 to the Coop. (He plans to file for bankruptcy if the Coop prosecutes.)

Now Doug has given up politics and going to the movies. He doesn't read the paper anymore. ("As far as I'm concerned the war ended in April," he said), but he does like the July issue of a small film magazine, which has been sitting around the living room all fall. It has a shot-by-shot analysis of Z as its feature story, and Doug takes a look at it nearly every day.

"It pretty much fills up the after noon," he said. "You know, I get up at 2:30, take a shower until three, then sit in front of the fan in my room for an hour..."

"What?"

"You know, to get my hair-dry. I've got to be careful; I'm going bald, I think. Anyway, then I read a little about Z-and then it's dinner. Hey, what time is it? I think it's dinnertime now..."