Word: comp
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...them. Thus, as Ec 10 would have taught me if I had ever decided to take it, this great demand must result in a very high cost. The marketplace would accomodate this demand by raising prices, for example, but Harvard has a far more exacting scheme: to wit, the comp...
STUDENTS from other universities of no small renown can simply volunteer to write for the paper, to take pictures for the yearbook, to give tours of the campus. But here, everything is a comp. What does "comp" mean, one may quite reasonably ask. "Competition?" No, heaven forbid, not "competition," the comp directors at The Crimson assured us. Not competition but merely "competence." You have to demonstrate that you're friendly enough to give a tour, for instance, or persistent enough to be a journalist...
...course, the flip side to all this is that if and when you do make it through the comp, the powers that be bestow upon you a title worthy of your achievement, a title that testifies to your position as the near equal of the entrenched establishment. The results are frequently rather interesting. For instance, "Official Poster Designer, Hasty Pudding Theatricals 161" has a rather Olympic ring to it, I think, while "Sackbut" tends a bit more to the je ne sais quoi...
...Well," I replied, "like, I had to comp, and..." (Note the significant error in judgement here: never mention the word comp unless you really feel like explaining...
...short, it was as if there was a large "No Vacancy" sign on our front door. There was a desire on both sides to overcome that perception, to convince incoming Black undergraduates that it is worth their while to comp for the paper. But the level of distrust, on both sides, was high. Too high...