The Smithsonian article touched on a perpetual bane for its students: Harvard loneliness.
"What New York has been to loneliness among cities," Maddock mused, "Harvard has been to loneliness among colleges: the big league."
Good enough, I thought. And then I read the end of the article. I've never been able to forget it. And in it lies the plainest argument for preserving the community of Harvard, not Club Harvard.
The essay concluded:
"`The true Harvard, said William James [a Harvard graduate himself], `is the invisible Harvard in the souls of her more truth-seeking and independent and often very solitary sons.' This was an exact description of his Harvard. When it became a piety--a chesty motto suitable for fundraising or for framing on a new common-room wall--the golden age was over."
If there is any golden moment to preserve from a "Harvard education", it more than likely belongs in this solitary pursuit of all of ours.