The Trainwreck Couple

About ten months ago, I indignantly quit Harvard with the intent to never return. Depressed and fed up with classes, I didn’t see a reason to be here anymore. About eight and a half months ago, I tried to return, and failed miserably. It seemed that the child throwing her tantrum was experiencing the wrath of her parents’ discipline.

Faced with this now-mandated vacation, I embraced it. I spent my spring term writing (drinking), reading (smoking cigarettes), and exercising (moving, slightly). I visited my brother in Vegas and saw LeBron James. I passive-aggressively quarreled with my roommates from my new apartment over e-mail. I started a blog. I wrote in it, once.

Yes, I had seen the world and grown as a person, and I was now ready to prove myself a worthy student. I was going to get back together with Harvard. To do that, one needs the best “lawyer” that can be found.

Unfortunately, you can’t hire a lawyer to represent you for the Administrative Board (Ad Board). Instead, the resident dean speaks on your behalf. And instead of being able to present evidence, all one can really do is write a heartfelt letter and hope it invokes sympathy and faith in your ability to function as a rational human being. As you can imagine, I spent much of the spring attempting to improve my writing.

Harvard’s version of trial and justice is mind-bogglingly nebulous. The mysterious members of the Ad Board meet upstairs at Lamont on Tuesdays, but I have never seen any of them enter or exit the building. They hear students’ cases and then vote, but in many cases students are not allowed to enter the meeting.

Essentially, they wear black crushed velvet hooded capes, sing a ritualistic chant at the beginning and end of meetings, perform a séance, and then vote on students, head’s up seven up style, if I had to guess. The Gatekeeper counts thumbs.

Luckily, I am no stranger to the Ad Board. We go way back. They’re my peeps, even though I don’t really know who they are. They have let me register late, drop classes late, quit the semester late, turn in final papers late, postpone an exam. But in order to get all this love, one’s gotta give it.

And give it I did. The letters I have written could make an anthology that would move mountains and part the seas. If my papers for class were even half as good, well, I probably wouldn’t still be trying to graduate.

In early August, I paid a visit to my resident dean. After talking about our summers, I cut to the chase. “What do you think my chances are in getting back to school this fall?”

After an awkward pause she estimated them at about 50-50. I sat, contemplative. Fifty percent was a fairly mediocre odd for Harvard, but a fairly incredible one for Las Vegas. I decided to pretend that Harvard Square was Las Vegas and Dudley House was the Bellagio.

Since we now know that the Ad Board is a secret cult, fueled by sadism and sacrifices, it makes sense that their first meeting was not until September 4th, just ten days before registration. This brought many personal dilemmas for me, including, but not limited to: Do I get drunk the night before the decision or the night of? Or, do I leave a burning bag of dog shit at my dean’s door or Drew Faust’s door if I don’t get back in?

I ended up buying a bottle of wine and drinking outside Adams with some friends the night of the decision. As I took a long, celebratory drag from my cigarette, a tutor approached and chided us for smoking, in a notably un-authoritarian way.

“I just got back into college!” I declared. “We’re celebrating!”

“Congratulations!” She was kind enough not to bust us for drinking in public. “But you’re going to have to go smoke on the other side of the street.”

Harvard, thanks for taking me back. I promise I won’t run out on you ever again.

Thea S. Morton ’06-‘08, a Crimson photo editor, is a history of art and architecture concentrator in Dudley House.