Word: microcosmic
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...bump on the plain, a galactic microdot where 63.189 people want to see what will happen next. "Davis probably could not have done better in his search for an American stew, but his selection begs the question of the value of conveniently designating one city or town as a microcosm for the larger whole Colonial historians, faced with a torrent of town studies recently, have come to no firm conclusions about their significance in studying a much more homogeneous society. For such an astoundingly diverse place as contemporary America--where the distinctions between society's winners and losers...
...admit that a student government would not be perfect in a simple majoritarian scheme is to admit to the failures of Harvard's grandiose scheme of the microcosm of Harvard in the Houses. I doubt that Harvard is inherently racist or sexist, though some students disagree, but I am certain that the homogeneous nature of many of the Houses, and perhaps Harvard as a whole, insulates most students--and the Faculty and administration--from the diversity and open-mindedness which the University so articulately continues to profess...
...undergraduate life. Most administrators concur that any system that makes two Houses 3 percent Black and another 17 percent Black, a system that allows one House to have 45 percent varsity athletes while another has 4.7 percent is a far cry from the ideal House that would be a microcosm of the College. Reliance on the preferential lottery also builds up and reinforces House stereotypes, adds to the frustration of those sent to undesired Houses, and makes real contact between disparate groups decidedly less likely. All in the name of preserving "student rights...
IRONIES ABOUND, TOO, on the home front. Harvard, more than its Ivy rivals, stresses its commitment to Houses that are representative of the College; paradoxically, its preferential lottery insures that stereotypes will surround individual Houses and destroy the ideal of the microcosm. Harvard, in the words of Archie C. Epps III, dean of students, feels its free-choice system "helps to increase student satisfaction with their assignment," yet the one of five students sent to undesired Houses--ones where the racial group to which they belong may be proportionately outnumbered--no doubt feels more embittered than Yale's randomly assigned...
Freeman brings freshness and wit to what is essentially a literary cliche: the world microcosm, the great passions of the large war replicated on a smaller scale, not among nations, but among a small group of individuals. In the beginning there is peace and a rustic scene of a small girls' school preparing for a charity Easter egg hunt. This Easter peace is broken when one of the young students at the school is discovered to be missing...