“No Time for This”

A few weeks ago, I witnessed a bizarre scene. As I crossed the Yard on my way to Lamont Library, I saw a dog stalking a squirrel while its owner stood close by. The dog crept forward stealthily, guided by an instinct that years of leashes and dog food could never completely suppress. Meanwhile, a crowd of bystanders gathered, titillated, perhaps, by the prospect of bloodshed, but at the same time confident that the dog would not succeed. Minutes passed. And then, with a rapidity and ferocity that shocked the onlookers, the dog pounced, caught the squirrel by its bushy tail, and proceeded to tear the helpless rodent to pieces. We gasped, not as much from horror as from disbelief. This was not supposed to happen.

Neither were the two armed robberies that recently took place on Harvard’s premises.

Much like dead squirrels, the idea of Harvard students being threatened with knives and umbrellas in the shadow of Widener Library is quite unsettling. I assume that crime could never happen here. At home in New York, I am always on the lookout for sketchy characters, but here, like many, I walk down empty streets at 4 a.m. without batting an eyelash and leave my computer unattended in the library for hours at a time—it’s a white Macbook; please don’t take it. Among the plethora of resources here designed to keep students safe, I get more comfort from the idea of a Harvard haven than from campus escorts or self-defense classes.

This university is its own, insular community full of people who have been taught from nursery school not to hit and to use their words. We made it to Harvard, in part, because we internalized this lesson particularly well—we use our words a lot, and we are confident that others will do the same. When one of the victims of last month’s thefts was approached by his assailants, he told them, “I don’t have time for this.”

Except for the few unlucky enough to have experienced it, most Harvard students are culturally unprepared to understand violence. The campus attempts to squelch aggression by intellectualizing it: there are entire departments effectively devoted to the study of people killing each other. But there is something fundamental about violence that Historical Study A-12, “Conflict and Cooperation in the Modern World,” doesn’t quite capture. Academia is inherently ill-equipped to deal with the realities of conflict, since it is based on the premise that disputes can be resolved through rational exchange of ideas. Yet violence, whether it happens to squirrels or Harvard undergraduates, is a strange animal. It is sudden, profound, and oblivious to logic and theory.

We emerge from our classes confident that we thoroughly understand the world. But every now and then, something happens that pops the Harvard bubble, and reminds us that book-learning is not the same as experience. It is a chilling realization—no one likes to see the ivory tower stained crimson.

Daniel E. Herz-Roiphe ’10, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Straus Hall.