Although I will satisfy these two Core requirements, I will not have the chance to study the history of America, a subject my school in Belgium ignored so it could teach us about Europe.

The College administration defends its Core curriculum by saying that the courses aim to expose us to different approaches in thinking and learning in different disciplines. No one can oppose such a laudable goal. But why can't we combine the study of approaches with the most classical backgrounds? To this, there has been no answer.

Next year, I and all of my classmates will graduate from Harvard. As a concentrator in French and Italian literature, I will know more than most about Moliere, Honore de Balzac and Emile Zola, and much about their Italian counterparts. In my case, however, I will have picked up only snippets of information from a diverse but disordered array of other disciplines--the English Revolution, early Christian literature in America, basic economics.

But I--and I suspect a number of you--will pass through Johnston Gate on graduation day having never experienced the thrill of a classic course we simply could not fit in--in my case a survey of the history of America or a survey of the history of art.

This disregard for the value of the traditional is not confined only to the classroom.

Take theater as a case in point. Much of what is called theater on this campus focuses on the bizarre or the surreal. Students often stage their productions in non-traditional venues considered artsy or experimental. While these spaces can sometimes add to an audience's understanding of a play, they can also make it more difficult to hear to actors or can limit audience size or performance space.

More often than seems necessary, drama groups bypass the greats of a genre which ranges from Shakespeare to Tennessee Williams in order to produce an experimental--some might say skewed--event.

Some variation from well-known scripts and established playwrights broadens our horizons. But today at Harvard it has become difficult to find a Shakespearean play staged in its original manner.