Well, maybe Mansfield's not, but others have indicated their desire to join my crusade. Porter University Professor Helen H. Vendler stated that "[students calling her by her first name] would not bother me at all." Besides, she added, "Leadership must be acknowledged, not claimed, unless you're Hitler."

Noting that the custom of calling professors by their first names is prevalent in Bennington College, she remarked that the present formal convention of using titles is just an "arbitrary social custom."

I called up Lawrence Buell, the dean for undergraduate education, to get his read on the situation. He said he did not advocate "a topdown edict" that would dictate policy on personal address at Harvard from The Crimson pages, University Hall or the department chairs. He emphasized that, "much more significant than the level of address is the level of humanity in the teaching process."

But, he did pledge his "fundamental support" to anything that would facilitate "the joint partnership in inquiry" between students and instructors. Overall, Dean Buell added, it would have to be left to the instructor to decide and take the initiative.

I'm not so sure we should settle for this compromise. A call to first names will not only draw us together more closely, it will destroy the hard-line patriarchy in place at Harvard.

Ironically, many of us spend huge amounts of time studying thinkers who were iconoclasts, people who broke down social barriers and shook things up. If Western civilization is rooted in what the Greeks had to teach us, maybe we should learn this final lesson.

Plato and Socrates went by their first name. Often they taught little study groups under the shade of the tree. And perhaps, most indicative of their informality, they didn't even wear pants.

C'mon Harvard. It's time for this nonsense to go. Drop your titles, if not your shorts.

Dan Markel '95, a Crimson editor, is dying to just walk up to the University's president and call him Neil.