Still, tomorrow I'll be a senior and will only have to deal with the administration's inconsiderate policies for one more year. Only one more year of calling my friends from the centrex phone when I need to get into their dorm. Only one year of dealing with the housing policy for this upcoming registration.
Somehow, I'll manage. After years of repeatedly complaining the administration is deaf to undergraduate concern, I've accepted the fact that, as a student, I can't do much to alter the College.
But tomorrow, many of you will no longer be students. Tomorrow as many of you receive your diploma you will become alumni of Harvard College.
Chances are, you will also become more apathetic about College policy. You will care less about randomization or the denial of universal key-card access because these policies will no longer affect you. As you get older you will begin to lose touch with students of the College, their needs and their cares.
You will go on to careers in business, academia, journalism, public service and the arts. You will care about your families and the health of relatives. You will forget the gripes you had as students. One day someone from Harvard will call asking for a donation and you will oblige blindly.
As students, we are here for just four years. Yet we are alumni for life. In many ways, this is the reason that response to student concern is so poor. Just when we begin to have some power, just when we begin to become life-long members of the institution and not four-year visitors, we no longer care.
But the College must serve its students. It is critical that alumni who have a say in College affairs not forget the issues that made them passionate as undergraduates. They must work for student-oriented changes after they've graduated.
Granted, not all alumni will have this power. But many that pursue careers in academia will end up teaching at Harvard. Other alumni will become leading donors. A handful might even become Harvard administrators (heaven forbid).
Regardless of your Harvard connection after graduation, it is essential that you keep in touch with current students; understand their concerns, listen, care and help them achieve their goals. You have the power to make change happen. As you enter the world in which it is normal to get a call at 9:13 in the morning, don't forget your years of being an undergraduate. Look fondly upon your four years of college, but please, please, please don't forget your gripes. Keep in touch with the issues faced by current undergraduates and aid students in their quest to make the College a better place. We need the help.
Joshua J. Schanker '98 is president of The Crimson.