There is no rivalry between Harvard and Tufts. Yale is Harvard's rival. That rivalry was built upon centuries of academic and athletic competition. If Harvard already has a rival, and Tufts does not compete with it in athletics or academics, then why do so many members of the Tufts community view Harvard with such resentment and anger?
The bizarre rivalry between Tufts and Harvard is completely one-sided. It manages to sustain itself solely at Tufts despite no substantive interaction between the two schools. (I should mention that Tufts played Harvard in football in 1916 and crushed it in a thrilling 7 to 3 victory. Tufts still holds on to the ball from that game, and it is prominently displayed in Cousens Gymnasium.)
I believe that Tufts students' feelings towards Harvard stem from several factors. First, Harvard is internationally recognized as one of, if not the best universities in the US. It stands in a tier of schools that is, unfortunately, a step or two above Tufts.
Second, there are a number of students at Tufts who applied to Harvard and other top tier schools and were probably denied admission. These students most likely thought that they were qualified for Harvard, and thus feel slighted at having been rejected. Everyone always says that there are many students at Tufts who were accepted to these top schools. I don't think that there are as many of these students as people think, and even if there are, they probably are not the ones who lead the anti-Harvard parade.
Third, Harvard is just down the road. It only takes a walk through Harvard Square to remind a Tufts student who didn't make the Ivy cut just what he or she is missing. The return back to Tufts leads to a comparison of facilities, students, and resources. I'll bet that if Tufts were located in central Vermont, the community would spend more time looking inward and appreciating what it has and less time comparing itself to Harvard.
Finally, there is a stereotype that Harvard students are arrogant. Many Tufts students find it easy to dislike Harvard because they operate under this misconception. To decide that all Harvard students are arrogant is an ignorant assumption. It is a sweeping generalization that serves only to justify and perpetuate negative feelings.
I noticed the bitterness towards Harvard the first time I visited Tufts as a senior in high school. Like many prospective students, I took the tour. When my tour guide passed the cannon, she turned toward it and said, "As you can see, the cannon is pointed at Harvard. Haw! Haw!" Well, the joke is on Tufts, because you won't hear a Harvard tour guide say, "This is one of our eight libraries, and as you can see, it is pointed at Tufts. Haw! Haw!"
Just the other day, on Oct. 29, The Daily article "Easy A's at Harvard Inflate Student Egos" began with the line: "Harvard is at it again." That sounds more like the first line of an episode of The Dukes of Hazard than a newspaper article. Why not just say, "Them damn Harvard boys has been running shine' all over Suffolk County!"
In the same article, Tufts Dean Charles Innouye, describing Harvard students, said, "They're essentially a lazy bunch. A lot of them aren't even that smart." To me, this seems like a rather inflammatory and unnecessary statement. What provoked Dean Innouye to make these sweeping generalizations, and why didn't he substantiate them with evidence?
When I hear Tufts students bashing Harvard, I am reminded of the television commercials for a car like Hyundai, in which the carmaker compares itself to Mercedes Benz with regards to something like crash test performance. It sounds ridiculous, because no one thinks or will be convinced that a Hyundai is better than or even as good as a Mercedes. By choosing Mercedes for comparison, Hyundai is acknowledging that Mercedes is one of the finest and most highly regarded cars. You will never see a commercial in which Mercedes Benz compares itself to Hyundai, because they have nothing to prove. And even if they did, they could accomplish nothing by showing superiority over Hyundai, because everyone already knows it.
It is the same with Tufts and Harvard. (I am not calling Tufts the Hyundai of the college circuit; I am simply using the car analogy as an example to illustrate my point.) Tufts compares itself to Harvard, but Harvard does not compare itself to Tufts. And why?
To reiterate, it is because some members of the Tufts community feel like they have something to prove. They want everyone to know that they were good enough to have gone to Harvard or some other place like it, and because they didn't, they will bash Harvard to make it seem undesirable.
An interesting thing to note is that there is little to no bitterness at Boston University and Northeastern towards Harvard. I believe it is because the majority of the students attending these universities were not rejected from Harvard or some other top school, and thus harbor no enmity.
Admission to college is a random and often inexplicable process. Straight A students are rejected because a school might want more musicians or artists or athletes. I was admitted to Tufts because I play the spoons and because I am a championship rickshaw driver.
There are students at Tufts who could have been or should have been accepted to Harvard or some other top tier school. For some reason, however, they were rejected. That made them mad, and justifiably so. But these students are still mad, and they express their anger (at whatever school) by being bitter and critical towards Harvard. It isn't good enough that these students go to Tufts, which is an excellent school.
I don't want to spend too much time comparing Harvard and Tufts. But, I will just list a few statistics, and you can draw your own conclusion. Harvard's endowment, the paltry sum of about $19 billion, is almost 30 times higher than Tufts' endowment of about $525 million.
Harvard has a regulation length NCAA basketball court. Tufts has a court, but it is a few feet short. Tufts was founded in Harvard's 216th year of existence, 1852. As much as everyone would like to dismiss the US News and World Report college rankings, there are reasons why Tufts has never made it above ten, and Harvard has never been below ten.Tufts needs to look inward at what it has and stop looking at Harvard to see what it does not have. Every member of the Tufts community is great in some way, and we don't have to put down another school to prove it. Let's be proud of Tufts, and let's be tolerant, intelligent individuals. It is time to end the rivalry with Harvard.
Alec Brownstein is a junior majoring in international relations.
