Word: gate
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...Class of '99, hurtling toward Commencement, the oft-cited inscription on the two sides of Dexter Gate has never seemed more relevant. But though many of us have passed beneath the gate opposite the Harvard Book Store daily for the past three years, do we know what the words really mean? The inscription is poetically vague, even cryptic, and merits a few minutes' reflection before leaving Cambridge for good...
Interestingly, the simplest interpretation seems based on inconsistent logic, and thus not so simple at all. On this reading, the inscription on the Mass Ave. side of the gate, "Enter to grow in wisdom," is read as a conditional statement. That is: "If you enter Harvard Yard, then you will grow in wisdom." It is as if Harvard is making us a promise: Come into my gate and you will learn...
...would then be faced with an equally realistic outlook on the Harvard experience. In this revised view, we come into Harvard because we are commanded to do so. "Enter," we are told by our guidance counselors, our families, our internal social barometer. Once the gate is open to us, it is barely possible to do otherwise. But if it was not our choice to come in, is the burden foisted upon us when we leave then especially unfair? Hardly. We did not ask for our intelligence or our privileges, but we did not refuse them, either...
Nonetheless, thinking of Enter as a command may cut into our stress level as we attempt to live up to the Harvard name. Whatever burdens come with the Harvard education are ours to bear. Just as we were pushed through Dexter Gate by those around us, so are we pulled...
...inscription can be read to say that just as "to grow in wisdom" gave us a reason to enter, "to better serve thy country and thy kind" can give us a reason to leave. As much as we may want to stay in the Ivory Tower, the gate can give us the motivation to say farewell to Harvard and to move on to the next stage in life...