About a month ago, I was in Carmichael Dining Hall, waiting in the interminable line for the special when I noticed a girl wearing a sweater with the Harvard logo emblazoned across the front.
I thought to myself that this action was certainly gutsy, as my relatively scant experience at Tufts has taught me that "Harvard" is a dirty word around here. But as I focused more on the lettering, the sweatshirt revealed a caption, asserting that Harvard was a place for students who could not be admitted to Tufts.
Nancy Bauer, an associate professor of philosophy, was recently profiled in the Daily. In an otherwise harmless biography penned by Arianne Baker, the most passionate remarks were reserved for the shortcomings that Bauer found in her Harvard education.
Bauer's remarks are certainly understandable, as she explained how her experience in Cambridge was formative and seminal in her development as a person.
But I couldn't help but wonder if the focus of Baker's profile was aimed at Harvard's flaws for a reason.
Not a week goes by without a column in the Daily or a person elsewhere on campus making a snide remark about Harvard. That august institution down the road deserves a fair amount of criticism in its own right, but the fact that so many students here are seemingly entranced with denigrating it is a little disarming.
Their treatment of President Larry Summers was shameful, and many outsiders take solace in the fact that their trustees have badly bungled any and all attempts to reform the school.
We should realize our good fortune that our own administration, which coincidentally also features a President named Larry, has been successful in piloting Tufts in an elite direction without much controversy.
With the knowledge that criticism and disapproval of any university is healthy and in some cases warranted, many students' fixation with disparaging Harvard is unbecoming and immature.
As an undergraduate I attended the University of California-Irvine, a small public school located in infamous Orange County.
On the first day of orientation, the student body president immediately noted that we should be happy with UCI and make the best of it. Most pointedly, he remarked that we could not let our denials from UCLA shape our experience at UCI.
In a way, he was right, but the fact that we were still dwelling on another school was more depressing than anything. Posters lined the walkways promoting competitions against the school in Westwood, with slogans promising a pyrrhic revenge over the Bruins for the rejections they doled out in April. Believe me, I certainly understand the need to belittle a school close in locale.
If the stereotype that Tufts is a safety school for those who were refused by the Ivy League is true, then our constant degrading of Harvard is even more pathetic.
It is understandable that we endlessly compare ourselves to Harvard since we are so close in proximity, but Tufts certainly stands more than strongly enough on its own.
For a university that only accepts a paltry 27 percent of its applicants and has a current freshman class with an average SAT score of 1399, there are enough reasons to celebrate its own accomplishments.
The Fletcher School of Diplomacy is a revered international institution, and the preponderance of International Relations majors enforces the fact that Tufts is becoming global in its own right. The School of Engineering has also been a strong and important facet of the University's growth.
In sum, there is no need for anyone here to be bemoaning the fact that he or she is a Jumbo in Medford instead of a Crimsonite in Cambridge.
It is comparable to hearing people whine that they are driving a BMW M3 when they really wanted to drive a Rolls Royce.
The bottom line is that both cars will get you where you want to go, they're both luxurious, and people would kill to get the chance to drive either one.
