Boats Against the Current
The Prodigal Son Returns
Tiger Woods is back. At least, Tiger Woods the golfer is back, roaming the fairways of Augusta National, where he is the betting favorite to win his 15th career major title at The Masters this week. Whether Tiger Woods the institution can ever return is still an open question.
Since he crashed his Cadillac into a fire hydrant last November—supposedly in an attempt to escape his golf club-wielding wife—Woods has taken one of the more dramatic nosedives in recent memory. With every turn, the story of his epic string of infidelities grew more sordid: sex with cocktail waitresses, sex with porn stars, sex on Ambien, and, most recently, sex with his next-door neighbor’s college-aged daughter. Important aspects of Tiger’s brand have suffered irreparable damage—the image of Woods as a paragon of discipline, mental toughness, and self-control that made him an ideal pitchman for corporate America is gone for good. Unsurprisingly, Tiger’s stable of sponsors has thinned accordingly, as everyone from Gatorade to Accenture has bid goodbye to the hapless golfer.
Whose Fault Is It?
“You scan some Houses: Mather, Kirkland, Quincy. Nothing. The only signs of life are from solitary souls with loud tape-decks and pre-meds scurrying through the night for warm, secret places to study.” Sound familiar? This description of a Harvard weekend was written in 1985 and is only dated by its reference to tape-decks. While much has changed in Cambridge over the past 25 years, at least one thing—the paucity of parties—seems to have stayed the same.
In fact, complaining about student life is one of Harvard’s oldest traditions, going back to the Great Butter Rebellion of 1766, when students rioted to protest meal quality under the presidency of Edward Holyoke. Nowadays, undergrads are more docile, but it’s unclear that they have a more charitable view of the school’s social offerings. One survey found that Harvard ranks almost dead last among 31 peer institutions in student social life. And it doesn’t take data to convince anyone who’s seen the typical Cambridge Friday night or heard the litany of complaints that it inspires.