aarongreenspan
kickbox
Hi,
I recently published my first book. It's called Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era, and it's a memoir that mostly concerns issues related to technology and education. It also discusses the consequences of living with an autistic sibling.
Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the book:
---
“What can I do for you?” he said.
From the moment the sound of the first word left his mouth and entered my ear, I knew that our meeting would be nothing less than a verbal train wreck. His tone indicated that I was already being ridiculed.
I was sitting on a plush beige sofa in an office in Massachusetts Hall, a small rectangular building lodged snugly next to Harvard Yard’s Johnston Gate. There was a computer with a sleek flat screen on a desk on the other side of the room, and the dark African masks resting on the shelves to my left were silently watching me think. The walls were painted a deep shade of red, which by virtue of their location in Harvard’s inner sanctum defined the word crimson. There was a woman sitting across from me, notebook in hand, ready to record my thoughts and emotional state so that in ten or twenty or a hundred years, someone might dig them out of a dusty filing cabinet. Sitting next to her, in an oversized chair, was the man who I had come to see and who had asked the question. His name was Lawrence Summers, he was the President of Harvard University, and this was his office.
I strived to ensconce my voice in the same formality that made the President sound so serious and dry. Yet when I heard myself speak, tinny and verbose by comparison, I knew that I would be perceived the same as every other overzealous undergraduate. I launched into the answer to his question.
“Well, I’m here because it was a pretty miserable month of August for myself and my entire family. I was forced to deal with the Office of the General Counsel for making a web site, called houseSYSTEM, with perfectly reasonable aims. To make a long story short, I feel as though College violated the guidelines in its own Handbook for Students, and it has certainly not allowed for due process. I guess my question for you really is, ‘How was it possible for the College administration to react in such a way to student initiative?’”
“I can’t answer for the behavior of other people,” the President said. “The Office of the General Counsel was not being disrespectful by enforcing Harvard’s trademark. Rob Iuliano wouldn’t be doing his job if they had not contacted you. And ‘due process’ only begins after disciplinary action is brought upon someone.” It seemed as though the President had been briefed. It didn’t matter. I began my defense.
“Nevertheless, we were allowed to use Harvard’s trademark as an officially recognized student group,” I countered. “Regarding due process, aside from the timeline, I think it is inconsistent for an institution that prides itself on freedom of expression to prohibit voicing one’s own side of things.” There was a tinge of irritation growing in my voice, and I was sure he was going to notice. I couldn’t stop it, though.
“I do not see the instance of disrespect here,” the President said flatly. I was shocked.
“In that case, what would constitute disrespect?”
“Someone being generally hostile, someone hanging up on you...”
“Dean Kidd did hang up on me, and then didn’t allow me to know anything about a meeting that had been held specifically about me.” I kicked myself for not saying what I meant. I had intended to say that I didn’t even know what crime I was being accused of. Sure enough, President Summers pounced.
“If there was a meeting about you, then it was perfectly acceptable for you not to be in the meeting. I want to make that clear. That was perfectly acceptable.”
I did my best to recover. “I mentioned it only as a fact: I was not in the meeting. Even if that was acceptable, I was not even allowed to know the outcome of the meeting. I was told that I would see the outcome in a letter.”
The assistant chimed in. “Was the letter sent?”
“No,” I answered. My strategy of not wasting the President’s time with details I guessed he didn’t care about was failing miserably. He had missed the big picture: Harvard had tried to shut down a web site that thousands of students had signed up for because it was consistent with his goal of centralizing functions within the University. It made life easier. Neither of us knew it would start something of a revolution among college students nationwide in a matter of months. On houseSYSTEM, students reviewed courses, bought and sold books, uploaded digital posters, electronically RSVPed to campus events, found those events on the Harvard map with a single click, and uploaded their own color photographs to a part of the site the administration had specifically warned me about creating: The Universal Face Book, which I also called “The Facebook.” I went on, hoping to convince him of my innocence with some hard evidence I had brought along in a thin binder.
“I don’t want to bog you down in details, but it seems relevant to mention some now. Aside from issues of disrespect, the administration used false pretenses to gain access to houseSYSTEM even when I presented them with the opportunity to see how it worked. Then, the administration forced me to turn over confidential student records under duress, threatening me with ‘disciplinary action’ if I didn’t comply.”
“How was the ‘disciplinary action’ conveyed?” President Summers asked.
“I don’t know, it was never specified.”
“HOW was it conveyed?” he almost shouted.
“He really is obnoxious!” I thought, recalling everything I had read about him, but knowing that having such thoughts in the middle of our conversation could not possibly be helping.
“Jay Ellison e-mailed me on behalf of the Office of the General Counsel.”
“Who?”
“Jay Ellison.”
“Yes, who is Jay Ellison?” he asked, much to my surprise, with an intonation that clearly implied I was an idiot for not knowing who he did and did not know.
“My Lowell House Senior Tutor, who was the contact person for all of my dealings with the administration.”
“What was to be turned over?”
“Information about each student who had signed up for houseSYSTEM, which included personal details such as cell phone numbers, and whether or not the student wanted others to know that they had signed up.”
“Oh, I read about that in The Crimson!” I had triggered some recollection of the issue in his mind, finally. “It said you were using their Harvard IDs against College rules. Of course you’re going to get in trouble if you ask for their Harvard IDs!”
“Actually, we didn’t use Harvard IDs. We just asked for their FAS passwords so that they could check their e-mail on the site. I was very careful to make sure that the way my server handled the requests did not violate College rules.”
The President rolled his eyes and emitted a loud grimacing noise. Unsure of what to do, I kept talking.
“In fact, I informed Dr. Franklin Steen, who runs FAS Computer Services, about the system two years ago, and he did not seem to have a problem with it then.”
The President paused to think, tapping his foot under the table. I had never observed such palpable impatience before. After a short but pronounced delay, he uttered a clear signal of dismissal. “I do not see how your description of the actual events that took place lives up to the seriousness of the allegations that you are making.”
At this, I became truly alarmed that I had misrepresented something, or everything. Was I being too calm? Should I have come in screaming, with arms flailing? Did he realize the true potential of my work, as I did? Did he understand that this was about more than my vacation, or a web site, but the course of my entire life? I felt myself merely raising my eyebrows. “What would you consider serious, then?”
“Well, if there actually had been some sort of...disciplinary action...taken, or if someone had harassed you in an ‘abusive’ manner...” He trailed off. I tried to remain diplomatic.
“While I agree that those are certainly serious matters, I probably would not be able to talk to you today if disciplinary action had taken place. Personally, I consider several weeks of e-mail from the Office of the General Counsel accusing me of crimes I did not commit to be at least on the verge of abusive.” The administration had made it quite plain that they would have been happy to see me leave.
The President’s mouth twisted into a smile. “Well, Aaron, what do you want me to do?”
“That’s the tough part. I don’t really know what to ask you to do. I don’t know what is supposed to happen when the College violates its own rules, since that probably doesn’t take place very often.”
“It sounds to me like you were just trying to skirt around the rules...which entrepreneurially-minded people tend to do.” It was a snide remark, and I took offense. I was proud to consider myself an entrepreneur. “You should have expected resistance for not going through the proper channels. You got quite a bit of it—but rightly so!”
“Do you really think it is fair for the entire Office of the General Counsel to take on a single student? I had to involve outside attorneys to defend myself!”
The President shot back. “First of all, it was not the ‘entire’ Office of the General Counsel. Harvard employs many lawyers, and I am sure just a fraction were concerned with your case. But absolutely! If you hired outside attorneys you should doubly expect the Office of General Counsel to get involved.”
“I wasn’t paying them—hiring attorneys to fight the Office of the General Counsel is not something I can really afford as a student.”
“It doesn’t really matter. If you were trying to be a rebel, then that is what you would get.”
“I’m not trying to be a rebel! It’s not like I’m doing this just to cause troub—” President Summers cut me off and spoke rapidly.
“Yes you are.”
I sat, dumbfounded. After five very long seconds, sitting like a pigeon on his couch, I regained my composure. “Well, I don’t know how to respond to that because it sounds like you’ve already made up your mind.”
The President became more animated. “Oh, I haven’t made up my mind. You have taken all of these actions, but really, you are just enjoying the fight.” Suddenly, the third voice in the room manifested itself once more.
“What President Summers means is not that you are ‘enjoying’ the fight,” his assistant said looking at President Summers, and then at me. There was an awkward silence.
“What he means is that...you’ve entangled yourself...in a complex situation.” She was trying hard to erase what her boss had said from my memory. I just stared.
“I know what the man said,” I snapped in my mind. Outwardly, I swallowed.
“I disagree that I am enjoying what I am presently doing.” It was true. There wasn’t a smile anywhere close to my face. The President continued his analysis of my wrongs.
“You should have expected so much resistance after you had hired lawyers. After that, it was basically all over.”
“Perhaps so, but Harvard’s lawyers made the first move! How is a student supposed to respond to the Office of the General Counsel? Not hire lawyers?” My tone of voice carried a mixture of disgust and disbelief, but my fate was already sealed.
“If I were you, I would write a letter trying to clarify the situation, explaining my point of view, saying that I was not trying to harm anything, that these are the steps I had taken...” the President said.
“I have written almost the exact letter you just described in an e-mail, sent to Jay Ellison.”
“‘I’m sorry.’ Did it say that in it?” The conversation was going about as bad as it could go.
“I don’t know what to apologize for, because I haven’t done anything wrong!”
“I disagree with this legalistic approach that you’ve decided to take,” the President remarked. “It’s really a counterproductive approach to the whole ‘venture,’—but if you want to do it that way, it’s alright. I think you should have gone to the Deans and the Office of the General Counsel before making the site.”
“There are no real channels to go through at Harvard to make a site like this. The Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard is the only possible channel, and once it heard about houseSYSTEM, it withdrew its support from my club completely.”
“Well... my advice, as someone who has seen a lot of complex situations, is to not take the aggressive approach, and to work with people. If you want to write me a letter with ‘serious allegations’ against a faculty member, I will look at it—well, I’m sure you understand that I have a lot going on, and so someone on my staff would actually look at it—but they will look at it, and respond to it with details of how your concerns have already been addressed.” It sounded like something a Stalinist court might have offered in the way of a compromise.
“I already wrote that letter,” I said, taking it out of my note pad and holding it up for him to see. “I even CCed it to your e-mail address, but I can re-send it if you would like.”
“I want a letter. If you really want to send it, that is, and it’s really your decision. It would be better to just move on, though.”
“I’m happy to move on! The reason I’m here is that I am relatively uncomfortable with the notion that another student could find themselves in a similar situation, and this could all happen just as easily to someone else! This seems to me to be a pretty clear violation of the Faculty’s 1970 Resolution in the College’s Handbook for Students on how to treat people with dignity and respect.”
President Summers had had enough. He stretched in his chair slightly. “Well, Aaron, you’re right. You’re right. We do take the Handbook for Students very seriously, and you are absolutely right about the College needing to treat students with respect. Thanks for coming by.”
I felt positively sickened. The President believed The Harvard Crimson—the same newspaper that had insinuated that he was fat, chubby and slow—more than he believed an undergraduate who had taken the time to share a real concern at his office hours. I even agreed with him on most matters of administrative policy. The entire point of houseSYSTEM had been to centralize College functions in one place, reducing inefficiency, improving undergraduate life.
“I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me,” I said. Then I got up, and began to exit out the door I had entered from.
“Nope, other door,” the assistant motioned, pointing behind me, and setting my cheeks on fire. She went out into the hallway right afterward. I could only smirk at everything I had just heard.
“Are you alright?” she asked, pretending to be genuinely concerned.
“Oh, I’m fine,” I said. “Just disappointed is all.”
“So much for innocent until proven guilty,” I thought.
As soon as I got back to my room in Lowell House, I wrote the entire conversation down, knowing full well that Harvard’s notes, written by the assistant, would be forever locked away in my file.
Facing two more long, miserable years at Harvard College, going to President Summers was my last chance at closure. I had failed to achieve it, utterly and completely. There was only one thing to do.
“I have got to get out of here.”
---
Feel free to let me know what you think.
Thanks for reading!
Aaron
I recently published my first book. It's called Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era, and it's a memoir that mostly concerns issues related to technology and education. It also discusses the consequences of living with an autistic sibling.
Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the book:
---
“What can I do for you?” he said.
From the moment the sound of the first word left his mouth and entered my ear, I knew that our meeting would be nothing less than a verbal train wreck. His tone indicated that I was already being ridiculed.
I was sitting on a plush beige sofa in an office in Massachusetts Hall, a small rectangular building lodged snugly next to Harvard Yard’s Johnston Gate. There was a computer with a sleek flat screen on a desk on the other side of the room, and the dark African masks resting on the shelves to my left were silently watching me think. The walls were painted a deep shade of red, which by virtue of their location in Harvard’s inner sanctum defined the word crimson. There was a woman sitting across from me, notebook in hand, ready to record my thoughts and emotional state so that in ten or twenty or a hundred years, someone might dig them out of a dusty filing cabinet. Sitting next to her, in an oversized chair, was the man who I had come to see and who had asked the question. His name was Lawrence Summers, he was the President of Harvard University, and this was his office.
I strived to ensconce my voice in the same formality that made the President sound so serious and dry. Yet when I heard myself speak, tinny and verbose by comparison, I knew that I would be perceived the same as every other overzealous undergraduate. I launched into the answer to his question.
“Well, I’m here because it was a pretty miserable month of August for myself and my entire family. I was forced to deal with the Office of the General Counsel for making a web site, called houseSYSTEM, with perfectly reasonable aims. To make a long story short, I feel as though College violated the guidelines in its own Handbook for Students, and it has certainly not allowed for due process. I guess my question for you really is, ‘How was it possible for the College administration to react in such a way to student initiative?’”
“I can’t answer for the behavior of other people,” the President said. “The Office of the General Counsel was not being disrespectful by enforcing Harvard’s trademark. Rob Iuliano wouldn’t be doing his job if they had not contacted you. And ‘due process’ only begins after disciplinary action is brought upon someone.” It seemed as though the President had been briefed. It didn’t matter. I began my defense.
“Nevertheless, we were allowed to use Harvard’s trademark as an officially recognized student group,” I countered. “Regarding due process, aside from the timeline, I think it is inconsistent for an institution that prides itself on freedom of expression to prohibit voicing one’s own side of things.” There was a tinge of irritation growing in my voice, and I was sure he was going to notice. I couldn’t stop it, though.
“I do not see the instance of disrespect here,” the President said flatly. I was shocked.
“In that case, what would constitute disrespect?”
“Someone being generally hostile, someone hanging up on you...”
“Dean Kidd did hang up on me, and then didn’t allow me to know anything about a meeting that had been held specifically about me.” I kicked myself for not saying what I meant. I had intended to say that I didn’t even know what crime I was being accused of. Sure enough, President Summers pounced.
“If there was a meeting about you, then it was perfectly acceptable for you not to be in the meeting. I want to make that clear. That was perfectly acceptable.”
I did my best to recover. “I mentioned it only as a fact: I was not in the meeting. Even if that was acceptable, I was not even allowed to know the outcome of the meeting. I was told that I would see the outcome in a letter.”
The assistant chimed in. “Was the letter sent?”
“No,” I answered. My strategy of not wasting the President’s time with details I guessed he didn’t care about was failing miserably. He had missed the big picture: Harvard had tried to shut down a web site that thousands of students had signed up for because it was consistent with his goal of centralizing functions within the University. It made life easier. Neither of us knew it would start something of a revolution among college students nationwide in a matter of months. On houseSYSTEM, students reviewed courses, bought and sold books, uploaded digital posters, electronically RSVPed to campus events, found those events on the Harvard map with a single click, and uploaded their own color photographs to a part of the site the administration had specifically warned me about creating: The Universal Face Book, which I also called “The Facebook.” I went on, hoping to convince him of my innocence with some hard evidence I had brought along in a thin binder.
“I don’t want to bog you down in details, but it seems relevant to mention some now. Aside from issues of disrespect, the administration used false pretenses to gain access to houseSYSTEM even when I presented them with the opportunity to see how it worked. Then, the administration forced me to turn over confidential student records under duress, threatening me with ‘disciplinary action’ if I didn’t comply.”
“How was the ‘disciplinary action’ conveyed?” President Summers asked.
“I don’t know, it was never specified.”
“HOW was it conveyed?” he almost shouted.
“He really is obnoxious!” I thought, recalling everything I had read about him, but knowing that having such thoughts in the middle of our conversation could not possibly be helping.
“Jay Ellison e-mailed me on behalf of the Office of the General Counsel.”
“Who?”
“Jay Ellison.”
“Yes, who is Jay Ellison?” he asked, much to my surprise, with an intonation that clearly implied I was an idiot for not knowing who he did and did not know.
“My Lowell House Senior Tutor, who was the contact person for all of my dealings with the administration.”
“What was to be turned over?”
“Information about each student who had signed up for houseSYSTEM, which included personal details such as cell phone numbers, and whether or not the student wanted others to know that they had signed up.”
“Oh, I read about that in The Crimson!” I had triggered some recollection of the issue in his mind, finally. “It said you were using their Harvard IDs against College rules. Of course you’re going to get in trouble if you ask for their Harvard IDs!”
“Actually, we didn’t use Harvard IDs. We just asked for their FAS passwords so that they could check their e-mail on the site. I was very careful to make sure that the way my server handled the requests did not violate College rules.”
The President rolled his eyes and emitted a loud grimacing noise. Unsure of what to do, I kept talking.
“In fact, I informed Dr. Franklin Steen, who runs FAS Computer Services, about the system two years ago, and he did not seem to have a problem with it then.”
The President paused to think, tapping his foot under the table. I had never observed such palpable impatience before. After a short but pronounced delay, he uttered a clear signal of dismissal. “I do not see how your description of the actual events that took place lives up to the seriousness of the allegations that you are making.”
At this, I became truly alarmed that I had misrepresented something, or everything. Was I being too calm? Should I have come in screaming, with arms flailing? Did he realize the true potential of my work, as I did? Did he understand that this was about more than my vacation, or a web site, but the course of my entire life? I felt myself merely raising my eyebrows. “What would you consider serious, then?”
“Well, if there actually had been some sort of...disciplinary action...taken, or if someone had harassed you in an ‘abusive’ manner...” He trailed off. I tried to remain diplomatic.
“While I agree that those are certainly serious matters, I probably would not be able to talk to you today if disciplinary action had taken place. Personally, I consider several weeks of e-mail from the Office of the General Counsel accusing me of crimes I did not commit to be at least on the verge of abusive.” The administration had made it quite plain that they would have been happy to see me leave.
The President’s mouth twisted into a smile. “Well, Aaron, what do you want me to do?”
“That’s the tough part. I don’t really know what to ask you to do. I don’t know what is supposed to happen when the College violates its own rules, since that probably doesn’t take place very often.”
“It sounds to me like you were just trying to skirt around the rules...which entrepreneurially-minded people tend to do.” It was a snide remark, and I took offense. I was proud to consider myself an entrepreneur. “You should have expected resistance for not going through the proper channels. You got quite a bit of it—but rightly so!”
“Do you really think it is fair for the entire Office of the General Counsel to take on a single student? I had to involve outside attorneys to defend myself!”
The President shot back. “First of all, it was not the ‘entire’ Office of the General Counsel. Harvard employs many lawyers, and I am sure just a fraction were concerned with your case. But absolutely! If you hired outside attorneys you should doubly expect the Office of General Counsel to get involved.”
“I wasn’t paying them—hiring attorneys to fight the Office of the General Counsel is not something I can really afford as a student.”
“It doesn’t really matter. If you were trying to be a rebel, then that is what you would get.”
“I’m not trying to be a rebel! It’s not like I’m doing this just to cause troub—” President Summers cut me off and spoke rapidly.
“Yes you are.”
I sat, dumbfounded. After five very long seconds, sitting like a pigeon on his couch, I regained my composure. “Well, I don’t know how to respond to that because it sounds like you’ve already made up your mind.”
The President became more animated. “Oh, I haven’t made up my mind. You have taken all of these actions, but really, you are just enjoying the fight.” Suddenly, the third voice in the room manifested itself once more.
“What President Summers means is not that you are ‘enjoying’ the fight,” his assistant said looking at President Summers, and then at me. There was an awkward silence.
“What he means is that...you’ve entangled yourself...in a complex situation.” She was trying hard to erase what her boss had said from my memory. I just stared.
“I know what the man said,” I snapped in my mind. Outwardly, I swallowed.
“I disagree that I am enjoying what I am presently doing.” It was true. There wasn’t a smile anywhere close to my face. The President continued his analysis of my wrongs.
“You should have expected so much resistance after you had hired lawyers. After that, it was basically all over.”
“Perhaps so, but Harvard’s lawyers made the first move! How is a student supposed to respond to the Office of the General Counsel? Not hire lawyers?” My tone of voice carried a mixture of disgust and disbelief, but my fate was already sealed.
“If I were you, I would write a letter trying to clarify the situation, explaining my point of view, saying that I was not trying to harm anything, that these are the steps I had taken...” the President said.
“I have written almost the exact letter you just described in an e-mail, sent to Jay Ellison.”
“‘I’m sorry.’ Did it say that in it?” The conversation was going about as bad as it could go.
“I don’t know what to apologize for, because I haven’t done anything wrong!”
“I disagree with this legalistic approach that you’ve decided to take,” the President remarked. “It’s really a counterproductive approach to the whole ‘venture,’—but if you want to do it that way, it’s alright. I think you should have gone to the Deans and the Office of the General Counsel before making the site.”
“There are no real channels to go through at Harvard to make a site like this. The Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard is the only possible channel, and once it heard about houseSYSTEM, it withdrew its support from my club completely.”
“Well... my advice, as someone who has seen a lot of complex situations, is to not take the aggressive approach, and to work with people. If you want to write me a letter with ‘serious allegations’ against a faculty member, I will look at it—well, I’m sure you understand that I have a lot going on, and so someone on my staff would actually look at it—but they will look at it, and respond to it with details of how your concerns have already been addressed.” It sounded like something a Stalinist court might have offered in the way of a compromise.
“I already wrote that letter,” I said, taking it out of my note pad and holding it up for him to see. “I even CCed it to your e-mail address, but I can re-send it if you would like.”
“I want a letter. If you really want to send it, that is, and it’s really your decision. It would be better to just move on, though.”
“I’m happy to move on! The reason I’m here is that I am relatively uncomfortable with the notion that another student could find themselves in a similar situation, and this could all happen just as easily to someone else! This seems to me to be a pretty clear violation of the Faculty’s 1970 Resolution in the College’s Handbook for Students on how to treat people with dignity and respect.”
President Summers had had enough. He stretched in his chair slightly. “Well, Aaron, you’re right. You’re right. We do take the Handbook for Students very seriously, and you are absolutely right about the College needing to treat students with respect. Thanks for coming by.”
I felt positively sickened. The President believed The Harvard Crimson—the same newspaper that had insinuated that he was fat, chubby and slow—more than he believed an undergraduate who had taken the time to share a real concern at his office hours. I even agreed with him on most matters of administrative policy. The entire point of houseSYSTEM had been to centralize College functions in one place, reducing inefficiency, improving undergraduate life.
“I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me,” I said. Then I got up, and began to exit out the door I had entered from.
“Nope, other door,” the assistant motioned, pointing behind me, and setting my cheeks on fire. She went out into the hallway right afterward. I could only smirk at everything I had just heard.
“Are you alright?” she asked, pretending to be genuinely concerned.
“Oh, I’m fine,” I said. “Just disappointed is all.”
“So much for innocent until proven guilty,” I thought.
As soon as I got back to my room in Lowell House, I wrote the entire conversation down, knowing full well that Harvard’s notes, written by the assistant, would be forever locked away in my file.
Facing two more long, miserable years at Harvard College, going to President Summers was my last chance at closure. I had failed to achieve it, utterly and completely. There was only one thing to do.
“I have got to get out of here.”
---
Feel free to let me know what you think.
Thanks for reading!
Aaron