Not the Final Word

"Branch out, try new subjects," urged the dean of first-years. "Branch out, try new subjects," urged the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science. "Try new subjects, branch out," urged the president. And native first-year that I am, I decided to do so.

Something exotic. Something crazy, Something I'd probably never be able to study again. Something that broadens my horizons. Something improving.

So armed with my backpack full of good intentions, I resolved to shop an Arabic class. Despite the fact that I was following the path mapped out by a star-studded panel of University luminaries, Harvard did its utmost to prevent me from carrying out my adventurous resolution.

First, the University tried to conceal the very existence of the course I settled on.

You won't find Arabic 111 in Courses of Instruction. You won't even find Arabic 111 in an unobtrusive corner of the Supplement to Courses of Instruction. No.

Arabic 111 lurks in the Unpublished Addendum to the Supplement to Courses of Instruction.

You've never seen it? Of course not. It's unpublished. But you'll be glad to know that the University encourages all students to take advantage of the lush profusion of courses offered in the Unpublished Addendum.

How, you may ask, did I discover the existence of the elusive Arabic 111, if the U.A. to the S. to C. of I. is really--as its name might suggest--unpublished?

It wasn't easy. First I had to infiltrate the demimonde of these undercover courses. I shopped a different Arabic class, where I was given the number of a nameless middleman who would debrief me by telephone.

I phoned and gave the proper passwords. "There's fish paste at the Union tonight." He disclosed the location and time of the class. I was half-expecting to be told to leave seven unmarked bills in a brown paper bag by a park bench to get hold of the textbook. Still, all was proceeding according to plan. Wasn't it?

A number of alarming questions suddenly occurred to me.

How would I fill out my study card? What was the catalogue code? What was the exam schedule? Was it a full or half course? Did it count for full credit?

For her own safety, this information had been withheld from the professor. My only option was to turn to the mysterious middleman again. He assured me that the class was a full course divisible for credit.

But just to make doubly certain, I called the Registrar's Office. They, surely, would have up-to-the-minute information? Guess again. Even they had no copy of the Addendum. (It really is unpublished.) And the only person who knew its contents was on an extended vacation in the Bahamas.

After half an hour's research, a panel from the Registrar's Office concluded that it was in fact a full course for half credit.

That was the final straw. I had spent the better part of a day traipsing around godforsaken backwaters of the campus to find information which should have been readily accessible to all students. I had nearly plunged into a course, to find, four years later, that I wasn't eligible to graduate after all.

Did no one think to make this information public? Did no one think? All I wanted was to become a more rounded individual--and the endless, mindless, senseless, hopeless morass of Harvard Bureaucracy defeated me utterly.

How can it be so complicated? Why can't they just list the courses available? Is it so hard?

I'm just a lowly first-year student, who has trouble finding the Basic Foods Counter in the Union, and they expect me to unravel this mangled red-tape bolognese.

The amount of confusing, contradictory, incomplete, incomprehensible, incestuous literature vomited up by the University constitutes a rain forest of Brazilian pro portions.

But to be fair, the Unpublished Addendum willbe published and disseminated to certain secret location around campus on an undisclosed date later this month. Too bad they missed the add/drop deadline.

Edward McBride '96 is a contributing writer for the Opinion page