News

Pro-Palestine Encampment Represents First Major Test for Harvard President Alan Garber

News

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu Condemns Antisemitism at U.S. Colleges Amid Encampment at Harvard

News

‘A Joke’: Nikole Hannah-Jones Says Harvard Should Spend More on Legacy of Slavery Initiative

News

Massachusetts ACLU Demands Harvard Reinstate PSC in Letter

News

LIVE UPDATES: Pro-Palestine Protesters Begin Encampment in Harvard Yard

TIS AN ILL WIND--

NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED

From time immemorial, when a necessary statute is not enforced officially, the Peepul generously take it upon themselves to act as keepers of the peace. Whether the undergraduate mob who bombarded a certain house on Plympton Street because of a belated burst of nocturnal jazz Friday evening, kept or broke the peace is a matter of opinion. That they enforced obedience to Parietal Rule No. 4, however, there is not the slightest doubt. Plainly it was a public demonstration that the greatest good of the greatest number shall be maintained, even at the sacrifice of alarm clocks, soap, bottles, and hair brushes, not to mention window panes, vibrating with contrapuntal syucopation.

Lawless mob action is not to be encouraged. Yet, the despotism of minority-owned and -operated saxophones over the sleep of the undergraduate masses has flourished diurnally, or rather nocturnally, to the point where mob action has at last interfered and set a precedent. The Riot Act has been read to yodelling Rheinharts, operatic understudies, and ragtime virtuosi. The day of the proctor and yard cop is obviously past, for the undergraduate has discovered he himself is a splendid disciplinarian, and he takes a decided pleasure in his office. Gilbert and Sullivan might well have said, "When constabulary duty's to be done, to be done, the student's lot is quite a happy one."

There is only one consideration to detract from the righteous joy of all self-appointed administrators of the law: University 4 will not recognize their credentials.

Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter.

Tags