This is going to be a parting shot. So, students want kegs of beer next weekend, the House Masters and Harvard administration have decided they are a bad idea, an expert on binge drinking has agreed that kegs would exacerbate student drinking and Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 blames it all on the beer industry.
What was that last one? Let me see if I can break the dean’s argument down. Lewis thinks that our desire for kegs at Harvard-Yale comes from a deeper, Freudian desire to live out our college years like the Coors Light ads we see on TV. The argument is as insulting as it is misguided, and in Lewis’ attempt to be Freud, the op-ed he wrote actually illuminates more about the administration’s state of mind than that of the students.
To the administration, it seems, we students are naive idiot savants in desperate need of guidance and direction—a stark contrast to the dynamic, independent individuals we marketed ourselves as when applying here. As Walter says of Donny in The Big Lebowski: “You’re like a child that wanders into the middle of a movie!” We’re Donny, folks. Like middle-school students looking at a billboard for Camel Lights, Harvard students are easy prey for anyone selling us the “stereotypical college experience” of partying hearty. How sad. How misguided. After all, it’s clear to anyone that if colleges were characters from Lebowski, Harvard wouldn’t be Donny. Dammit, we’re D-grade porn-star Karl Hungus. So, Lewis, don’t be surprised if we show up to fix ein cable.
