Harvard Porn?

I just learned that Har­vard is launch­ing a porn mag­a­zine fea­tur­ing stu­dents down­load boon­dock saints the .

Har­vard stu­dents. Nudi­ty. One shud­ders.

Actu­al­ly, they’re prob­a­bly shud­der­ing them­selves. It gets cold in Boston.

Seri­ous­ly, I can’t help but won­der how long it is until some­one at Stan­ford tries to copy­cat Har­vard (con­sid­er our copy­cat mas­cot as evi­dence).

Once again for the record, Chi Alpha thinks porn is bad. The fact that Har­vard is now com­plic­it only makes it worse!

3 thoughts on “Harvard Porn?”

  1. Stan­ford was nick­named “the Car­di­nal” back in the late 1800’s- Well before col­lege ath­let­ics became so fol­lowed and glo­ri­fied. Our school nick­name has a his­to­ry that goes back for over one-hun­dred years and actu­al­ly occured com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent of the Crim­son. This nick­name was hand­ed by a local SF reporter.

    Check out the his­to­ry on it- It’s some­where on the web.

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  2. Thanks for the com­ment. I checked online, and the offi­cial expla­na­tion seems com­pat­i­ble with the orig­i­nal arti­cle I jok­ing­ly ref­er­enced.

    If I read it right, Stan­ford had a mas­cot for over four decades, dropped it, and then strug­gled to find a new one (the stu­dents reject­ed many sen­si­ble sug­ges­tions, my favorite being the Rob­ber Barons).

    I don’t know for sure, but it sure makes sense to me that one of the sig­nif­i­cant appeals of the “Car­di­nal” was its resem­blance to a cer­tain East Coast school’s mas­cot.

    Maybe not, though. I’d be curi­ous to see any oth­er his­to­ries that dis­cuss the issue.

    Reply

  3. The fol­low­ing was a pri­vate let­ter from Ger­hard Casper, pres­i­dent of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty , to James Fal­lows, edi­tor of U.S. News & World Report. With the per­mis­sion of both, it since has entered the pub­lic domains.

    STANFORD UNIVERSITY OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

    GERHARD CASPER

    Sep­tem­ber 23, 1996 Mr. James Fal­lows Edi­tor U.S. News & World Report 2400 N Street NW Wash­ing­ton, DC 20037

    Dear Mr. Fal­lows:

    I appre­ci­ate that, as the new edi­tor of U.S. News & World Report , you have much to do at this moment. How­ev­er, it is pre­cise­ly because you are the new edi­tor that I write to you, per­son­al­ly.

    I empha­size you, because of your demon­strat­ed will­ing­ness to exam­ine jour­nal­ism in the same way that jour­nal­ism exam­ines all oth­er facets of soci­ety. And I say per­son­al­ly because my let­ter is for your con­sid­er­a­tion, and not a let­ter to the edi­tor for pub­li­ca­tion.

    My tim­ing also is relat­ed to the recent appear­ance of the annu­al U.S. News “America’s Best Col­leges” rank­ings. As the pres­i­dent of a uni­ver­si­ty that is among the top-ranked uni­ver­si­ties, I hope I have the stand­ing to per­suade you that much about these rank­ings — par­tic­u­lar­ly their spe­cious for­mu­las and spu­ri­ous pre­ci­sion — is utter­ly mis­lead­ing. I wish I could forego this let­ter since, after all, the rank­ings are only anoth­er news­pa­per sto­ry. Alas, alum­ni, for­eign news­pa­pers, and many oth­ers do not bring a sense of per­spec­tive to the mat­ter.

    I am extreme­ly skep­ti­cal that the qual­i­ty of a uni­ver­si­ty — any more than the qual­i­ty of a mag­a­zine — can be mea­sured sta­tis­ti­cal­ly. How­ev­er, even if it can, the pro­duc­ers of the U.S. News rank­ings remain far from dis­cov­er­ing the method. Let me offer as pri­ma facie evi­dence two great pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties: the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan-Ann Arbor and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia-Berke­ley. These clear­ly are among the very best uni­ver­si­ties in Amer­i­ca — one could make a strong argu­ment for either in the top half-dozen. Yet, in the last three years, the U.S. News for­mu­la has assigned them ranks that lead many read­ers to infer that they are sec­ond rate: Michi­gan 21–24-24, and Berke­ley 23–26-27.

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