Word: socialism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...looking for people we enjoy being with, and that cuts across any social, economic, religious or ethnic barriers," one would-be fraternity founder told The New York Times last week. The student's sentiment--echoing a familiar plea at this large College--is natural, even admirable, but his would be method is not. Pursuing the end of social contact, fraternities create the illusion of trading in the difficult, human endeavor of understanding each other in the real world for the phony bonhomie of a club...
...needs to say it is easy living at Harvard. No one need declare that social isolation necessarily makes students here smarter, stronger or more compassionate. But even assuming that such isolation is endemic here, is it so patently false to believe that independence--intellectual and social--contributes to a sensibility that helps one meet the severest challenges, like those of private conscience...
...have, right here, one of the grossest examples of social distinction still active at the collegiate level. The final clubs, dating from the 1870s, have carved out a place for elitism beyond the norm even at Harvard. Santayana called the system "the secret society...to which everybody of consequence belonged...
Criticism directed at institutions like The Crimson for exclusivity and narrow-mindedness reflect uneasiness about unwarranted social identification. To know that fraternities deserve at least such scrutiny--and remember that they exist only for such social identification--one need simply look at the news. Reports of some fraternities' problems with sexual harassment, racial insensitivity, alcohol abuse, etc., are not unfounded...
...long been expected to succeed his mentor, will get no honeymoon, since the change at the top does not alter the crisis down below. Given Krenz's hard-line convictions, there is little expectation that he will be the leader who will guide East Germany along the path toward social and economic reform. Krenz may turn out to be only a transitional figure, put in place, like the Soviet Union's Konstantin Chernenko, to warm the chair for a more visionary thinker. "The real reformers will take over power in the next six to twelve months," predicts Wolfgang Seiffert...