Social Life

"Community' is a big word here, but people really have to try to make their own communities. There's really nothing setup in the divinity school to encourage a community feeling," says MTS student Allan E. Janik, who says a good deal of the problem stems from simple shortcomings like a lack of a student lounge or late-night snack spot.

"I think the idea of alienation is a little harsh, but in many cases it is the situation. Each person is on his own, more or less," Janik says. "If we're advocating the pluralism, we should make it happen."

"I'm not as positive about how strong a community it is. For a divinity school, you'd expect there would be a real warm sense of community," adds Cohen.

But while some have misgivings about the quality of life in general, the Divinity School earns uniformly high marks for the quality of its instruction and for combining theological study with other areas.

Most notably, the Divinity School and the Graduate School of Education offer a joint program which trains secondary-school teachers who want a religious background. That program is the only officially organized joint degree, but students have found ways to combine the MTS with disciplines from law and education study to joint religion-politics courses.

Ann-Marie Marcialle, for instance, has carved out a four-year program which will give her a JD from the Law School and a Master's from the Divinity School. Concentrating on the concept of power as a legal and religious tool. Marcialle says she plans to become a public interest lawyer when she graduates and later move into politics.

Dean of Students Guy V. Martin says that although an increasing percentage of students have opted to become ordained when they graduate--90 percent of last year's M Div. class--he says he sees more students studying joint programs than ever before and more coming to the Divinity School in their 30's after beginning a career in law or medicine or other fields.

But while the school continues to grow in many directions, the central obstacle to a rosy future remains the shortage of money. Rupp makes no bones about the school's rough times. "I think there's a case to be made that we are the poorest school at Harvard. I think that between the Design School, the Graduate School of Education and the Divinity School, you could argue about which is the worst have-not." The challenge to the school, Rupp adds, is to attract the donations and keep down expenses, to insure that the school can continue to grow.