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The world is full of injustice, but never worse than when it affects Harvard students. We were confronted with this uncomfortable reality last week, when a team of YouTubers breached our hallowed halls with typewriters, cameras, and a can-do attitude. Disguised as Harvard students, the YouTubers crashed at least two large lecture halls, shouting, tapping noisily on vintage typewriters, and generally harassing the lecturers.
We cannot overstate our offense at this interruption (though we’ll certainly try). We came to Harvard hoping to be walled off from the world, the vagaries of day-to-day life dashed against the wrought-iron gates of Harvard Yard. Instead, we were inconvenienced.
More seriously, though, we are actually a bit peeved. There was an egotism in interrupting last Tuesday’s rally for an Ethnic Studies department, where our would-be comic flailed a bit and generally undermined the seriousness of the issue. He seemed to be broadly sympathetic to the cause, but the rally was subordinated to his broader routine.
Likewise, there’s an egotism in crashing a class as large as Life Sciences 1B, in thinking that you’re funny enough to justify interrupting a couple hundred people, commandeering their attention for a standup routine they can’t leave. We as students may be utterly undeserving of deference, but we do think our Professors deserve a little.
None of this should suggest that we can’t take a joke; we’re actually very funny. Here’s a list of jokes we find quite droll. Camus has us clutching our sides, Swift in stitches, Gogol gasping; invite us to a party sometime and we won’t shut up about them. No really, please, invite us to a party sometime.
We even like some humor directed at our shining University. Making fun of Harvard can be a great time, and we actually do it quite a bit. On Harvard Time knows just what buttons to push in making fun of the place we love to hate. So do the wonderful YouTubers who walk around Science Center Plaza, dangling free iPhones as they convince us to show off our embarrassing ignorance for their channels. There’s no shortage of appropriate mockery, and we’re happy to be the victims of ridicule; we just think we deserve a better class of criminal.
Anyway, we’re glad this will soon fade from collective memory. We’re a little jealous that many more people will watch the prank than will read this piece. But we take comfort in the grace and aplomb of our measured response: We condemn this invasion of our holy of holies unequivocally, calling for justice in the next world if we cannot get it in this one. But we don’t even, like, care anyway.
This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.
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