Word: pbk
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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There is no more reason for PBK to be bound by the sum of random variables numerically coded on a transcript than there is for the admissions committee of Harvard College to be bound by its applicants' high school grades and College Board scores. Grades, whether of course work, generals, or theses, are humanly devised estimates of human performances, and are therefore themselves always subject to further human evaluation...
...would like to think that the atrocities Mr. Chester cited ("Men with under 9. averages had been elected, while those close to 11. had been rejected; cum laude candidates had been elected over magna candidates...") all occurred because the electors of PBK refused to couch the administration of honor in Mr. Chester's Procrustean bad. Having been present at the June elections in 1963, '64, and '65, I can vouch that the great majority of these apparent reversals favored a heterogeneity of interests, favored signs of intellectual flare and excitement, over that massive but dull competence which gets...
...without doubt, Phi Beta Kappa simply makes mistakes in trying to select the 90 intellectually most powerful members of a class in which six or seven hundred graduate with honors. No one claims PBK is infallible. But neither, fortunately, is it as significant as Mr. Chester inclines to believe. If Mr. Chester is on the losing end of one of PBK's mistakes, let him take consolation in knowing that membership in PBK neither bestows nor rewards greatness. Joel E. Cohen...
This club-like election ritual has had some distasteful results. For example, of four history concentrators in my House with very similar records, the two who had close friends in PBK were elected; the other two (including myself), who had different interests, different friends, and in certain ways, better records, were not elected. Upon questioning other sources, I found that such occurrences were not unusual. Men with under 9. averages had been elected, while those close to 11. had been rejected; cum laude candidates had been elected over magna candidates; men who had dropped theses, but had friends, had made...
...contention is that PBK should act either like an honorary society or like a Final Club (for those of certain interests), but should not be allowed to act as both. I believe that there are those in this impressionable world who might be led to believe that a PBK member from Harvard was necessarily a better student than one who was not a member. Under present conditions, this assumption is simply not true. Why not scrap this behind-the-scenes "hocuspocus" and determine election by objective means: by giving a certain weight to (1) the student's average...