POINT/COUNTERPOINT

Pass on the beer

Being a vegetarian at Harvard is hard. You can’t eat half the entrees in the dining hall and Felipe’s is sort of a let down. But non-beer drinkers have it even worse. Imagine being veg and going to a party to toss ping pong balls into cups of ground beef, or doing a handstand over a keg of steak, or entering a lottery to win a stein of foie gras. It’s simply outrageous.

So maybe that isn’t a fair comparison. My aversion to beer isn’t based on any sort of religious or cultural restriction. In fact, it’s actually based on not wanting to drink a cup full of barley. But does that not strike anyone else as gross? Am I alone here?

At Harvard, not being a beer drinker carries a stigma. If you abstain from alcohol—“even beer?!”—then you’re labeled a wuss. If you drink, but opt for something else, than you run the risk of being considered a liquor snob. And it’s hard not to come out of the closet as a non-beer drinker. The Queen’s Head—Harvard’s gleaming, retro social space du jour—has a beer-centric menu and a calendar of events that’s a regular Beer-a-palooza. There’s little in the way of beer alternatives, and pickings are slim for the underaged and gluten-free of Harvard.

Rationally, I can understand why people love beer. It’s cheap, it’s conducive to drinking games, and you can drink a Solo cup full of it without landing in University Health Services. But every time my father offers me a sip from his bottle during a football game, or I find myself with a can of Natty Lite at a room party, I’m going to pass on it. And it’s not because I’m a killjoy!

Emma M. Lind ’09, a Crimson editorial executive, is a history and literature concentrator in Winthrop House.



Vote with your glass

Beer is in dire need of help—your help.

In the U.S., beer has been the subject of decades of horrifying mistreatment and ignorance. The proverbial American “cold one”—Bud, Miller, or Beast—is a travesty, an affront to human dignity.

Thankfully, Harvard’s Queen’s Head Pub is making small steps in the right direction, having hosted Beer School and Oktoberfest in the past two weeks. Still, there is much more work to be done—far from abandoning its focus on beer, the Pub needs to redouble its energies and rid itself of its last bad beers and “malternatives.”

Beer is more diverse than wine, and a better value for money. But its myriad advantages—its deliciousness, its nutritional-content, its social lubrication value—are too often taken for granted. There are thousands of delicious varieties on the market, and the Queen’s Head has done well to expose Harvard students to a few more of them.

But the situation in America is still dire. Last May, I told a roomful of fellowship-recipients that I was most excited about a summer in England because of their excellent beer. Everyone laughed—but I wasn’t joking. Here in the U.S., yellow piss like Coors is either chugged or doled out as punishment in games designed to minimize exposure to the taste buds. American microbreweries make the world’s best beers, and yet most of us never venture far beyond Natty Ice.

Am I an elitist? A snob? Far from it. I want everyone to appreciate and experience the variety and beauty of beer, regardless of gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity or race. Vote with your glass: We don’t need less beer—we need better beer.

Henry M. Cowles ’08, a Crimson arts editor, is an environmental science and public policy concentrator in Kirkland House.