It was the much sought-after perfect weekend: Harvard/Yale 2010. I took the train on Friday afternoon to Cambridge, where I could stay the two nights with any of three high school friends, and I hadn’t a page of reading to do all break or a single care in the world. It was freshman year, my first The Game, and my first visit back since my two-minute college tour drop-in. (Seriously, two minutes. Ask my dad; I got out of the car, walked twenty feet toward the Harvard Information Center, turned right back around, citing “bad vibes.”)
It started the first night. One friend, knowing his XY chromosomal makeup and lowly freshman status meant he wouldn’t get into some final clubs party, sheepishly encouraged me and a female friend to leave him at home and go out, since we’d most certainly get into the party. Yes, this is the first thing to know about Harvard — that it, like Ann Romney, LOVES WOMEN! What culture of misogyny? Not here!
Then, all this talk of “comping.” What is comping, those who haven’t been to the Game in an even year may ask. Well, it’s only the best idea ever! Comping is NOT short for “competing,” it’s short for “competency,” as anyone who uses the word will vehemently clarify. It basically amounts to being somebody’s bitch for a semester, which everyone knows is the best and classiest way to create group loyalty and self-importance.
One friend lamented not having time in the semester to comp prison tutoring at Harvard. (How presumptuous of him to think he could just give help just because he wanted to.) And no, a lowly freshman in her first semester at Harvard can’t just get on some panlists and start writing for the Crimson immediately — there’s a rigid process of comping the paper there that isn’t comparable to the YDN culture (or the Herald’s, or the New Journal’s, etc). So in other words, comping is a crucial and helpful way to create explicit social and extracurricular hierarchy, which, let’s be honest, clearly serves the greatest good for the greatest number, and is not at all a way for kids to create extraneous hoops to jump through for existential validation now that they’re at college, which had always seemed the ultimate such hoop.
Also, a lot of Harvard parties have entrance lists, decorum Yale seems to have mostly ditched at this point. But why? The fact that I could walk into any party on or off campus here — and at most face only a little awkwardness — is preposterous! Good fences make good neighbors, and even those fences should be on the OK’d list, or at least be the hottest girl in the room.
Like everyone who goes to Harvard, the Charles River is extraordinary, definitely not just a normal whatever river not worth traveling to stand near. Guys, it’s not like they’re all convinced of their specialness without reason! It really is just so exciting to be around people who genuinely do believe that they’re the best. It’s especially appealing and fun-making that they’re so attractive in every way. It would just be so wild to hook up with any of those Harvard guys who all seem to have giant poles up their butts that go through their heads.
You’ll also quickly realize how unnecessarily PC we are at Yale. It’s just refreshing when you’re at a suite pregame and people are making fun of people who are gay by calling them gay and laughing. Yeah! Chill, brah! Three cheers for heteronormativity and the male gaze.
I know I was only there for one weekend and that I can’t generalize and say that the whole school is as pretty as the picture I got. Still, I can’t believe I’m missing it Saturday!!! I’ve been looking forward to it for two full years, but my flight home is booked for Friday morning. I guess I’ll just have to spend three extra days in California. Peace out, Hahv.