March Madness

Despite proclaiming myself a Duke fan, I’ve been reading the University of North Carolina’s newspaper a lot recently. I wish I could say this was for bracket research, but the Final Four has become a diversion from the sadder news: the March 6 murder of Eve Marie Carson, the 22-year-old student body president of UNC.

In the aftermath of this random killing, many tributes have been written to Eve’s life and the love she had for her peers. I’ve cried over anecdotes about her school pride—wearing Carolina-blue sneakers and leading Tar Heels cheers before basketball games—and her dedication to helping others, even complete strangers. Her friends and school administrators say that the greatest memorial to Eve would be for others to emulate her spirit and passion, and to follow “the Carolina way,” a mantra that defined both her life and her school’s commitment to service. And although I only knew of her through a friend, the idea of this memorial has become very resonant to me, especially as my own college career comes to a close.

There are certainly notable student leaders, campus celebrities, and bubbly, kind people at Harvard. I’m sure that if faced with a similarly tragic loss, our school would come together emotionally. But on a day-to-day basis, I wonder how many of us feel proud of Harvard as more than a prestigious academic institution, a stepping-stone to postgraduate success, or the name emblazoned on every hoodie we own.

Harvard pulls out the “school spirit” stops at least three times a year—Harvard/Yale, Housing Day, and Commencement. But I don’t think a football rivalry articulated by getting wasted at 10 a.m., the jingoism about arbitrary placement in a dorm, and a week of pomp and circumstance make a school spirited. These are all rituals, in which it’s easy to go through the motions, get drunk, and wear a vaguely chauvinist House pride t-shirt.

It’s hard to love Cambridge in February. It’s hard to care about serving others when your own academic/extracurricular/social life is a shambles. It’s hard to get to the games for Harvard’s sports teams or to student arts performances during interminable stretches of midterms and reading period. But it’s also really hard to live on a campus where mental health and stress issues are endemic and the closest approximation we have for school-wide community are late-night crowds at Lamont.

I don’t expect that everyone would memorize our fight song or sport more Crimson-colored gear and we’ll suddenly have the fun and friendship of a Big Ten school. But I do expect we could celebrate genuinely our friends’, peers’, and school’s accomplishments, rather than mask deep cynicism about crowded housing and the Core with beer and circuses.

This sounds incredibly corny and moralizing, but both the kind words written about Carson’s school spirit and a recent women’s lacrosse game have shown it to be otherwise. At the sparsely attended mid-week game, the entire women’s hockey team took a break from practice to cheer their fellow athletes on to a win. I’ve started going to more athletic events in my senior spring and I’ve realized this attitude is contagious—and wonderful. Wouldn’t you love a hockey-team’s worth of support the next time you were down to the wire on a project or feeling beaten up by Harvard?

As we welcome freshman into our Houses this week and college basketball frenzy kicks in (with Harvard far-removed from the Big Dance), I hope we might take time to consider who around us needs cheerleaders and who would benefit from the support of their peers. I don’t think you need a class ring to show your Harvard pride, but I hope we’ve all met at least one person like Eve Carson who makes us proud to be here.

Kristina M. Moore ’08, the former president of The Crimson, is a history and literature concentrator in Dunster House.