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I used to cringe at calling Harvard a “small school outside Boston” — but recently, that’s become so much more tempting.

Harvard is constantly in the news, and almost never for a good reason. Every institutional scandal, statistic, or internal letter becomes national evidence of some moral or intellectual failing. Students have become walking emblems — symbols of everything people think is wrong with higher education.

The constant barrage of personal criticism toward Harvard students turns complex national problems into moral panic — deflecting attention from the deeper forces reshaping the lives of young people everywhere.

In early October, the New York Times ran an article titled “Harvard Students Skip Class and Still Get High Grades, Faculty Say.” However, this was not the only title of the article — it also ran under “Harvard Has Identified Another Problem: Its Own Students.” It openly places the blame for grade inflation and chronic absenteeism on the students — and ties these issues to Harvard’s political homogeneity. The message is clear: Harvard students aren’t just lazy; we’re politically stubborn and morally adrift.

The problems ascribed to Harvard are, in fact, nationwide epidemics. Nationwide research shows that time spent in class has dropped significantly over the past decade, with an especially sharp decline after Covid-19. Professors across the country — from Colorado State to MIT — have all voiced similar concerns. According to the Department of Education, grade inflation, too, has become a national trend.

The NYT piece made explicit a familiar pattern: Harvard’s challenges stem from the moral failure of its people — not a reflection of broader shifts. The same thing happened in 2024, when campus protests over the Israel-Palestine conflict became shorthand for youthful extremism.

There is no denying that conflict in the Middle-East is pressing — drawing out intensive emotional reactions from politicians and citizens alike. But the protests on Harvard’s campus were proportionate to the national sentiments of young people. In March of 2024, Gallup found that young people’s approval ratings of Israel dropped from nearly 30 percentage points — with only 38 percent of young people viewing Israel favorably. The nature of the outrage was also intense — with such high stakes on both sides, it’s hardly surprising.

Harvard culture is consistently painted as a source of national trends rather than a symptom and its students become the face of moral decay rather than its result.

It’s harder to have a conversation about the aftermath of Covid-19 learning losses, the erosion of public trust in institutions, the economic anxiety reshaping higher education, and widespread polarization than to point and sneer at a few students in Cambridge.

Instead, we’ve flattened our criticisms into a single, scolding message: look at these spoiled kids. They’re what’s wrong with America. If they straightened up, maybe things wouldn’t be so bad. It’s a comforting story, with a clear villain and path forward.

While Harvard is praised for its initiatives to admit a more diverse socioeconomic class, and even as the University makes efforts to bring in more students with ideological differences – Harvard students will always be elite, woke, nepo-babys to much of the American public.

Many students can feel this tension most intensely when they go home. Whenever many of us mention Harvard, we’re immediately asked about feeling stifled by the lack of free speech. They don’t think we’re personally stifling free speech — it’s always an amorphous “other” committing injustices, and those they know are the exception to the rule. People never consider the plausible explanation that Harvard students do not fit the narrative pushed by national media outlets.

However, we should expect more nuance from the New York Times and other national outlets. Fox News pulls no punches when it comes to reporting on Harvard’s flaws – and has published op-eds and run interviews calling students or student culture morally corrupt. There is no room for conversation. As Harvard navigates the same issues as much of the country, its students are taking on a variety of approaches, opinions, and perspectives. We never see this perspective broadcasted on a national level.

America expects Harvard to be better. It expects Harvard students to be the pinnacle of academic discourse and young potential. Harvard students expect that of themselves as well, it’s part of the reason why our rates of imposter syndrome are so high.

But fundamentally, we are in our twenties. We are victims of the same national trends that plague young people everywhere. While we may be selected for our ambition, curiosity, or drive, none of those qualities beget experience or knowledge that comes with age and experience.

If the New York Times published a piece titled “College Students Sometimes Don’t Go to Class” people would wonder why such an obvious statement was news. If it ran “Young People Engage in Attention-Grabbing Protest” — those who were alive to see the Vietnam war protests would scoff. But attach the word “Harvard,” and suddenly the piece serves as a referendum on declining national morality.

Harvard deserves national scrutiny — but scrutiny that asks what its struggles reveal about the broader decline in civic trust, academic motivation, and youth engagement is more impactful than a misguided hit piece

Most Harvard students are here to learn and walk out with a stable job, maybe have a little bit of fun along the way. We grapple with the same national concerns as everyone else – only when we falter, the media turns us into headlines. Harvard isn’t a machine creating soulless symbols, we’re just the most visible place where America’s own contradictions play out.

And until the news can catch up with that realization, I’ll just have to keep calling it a “small school outside Boston.”

L.A. Karnes ’28, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a double concentrator in the Comparative Study of Religion and Government in Mather House.