The New Honor Code: A Simple Plan for Raising Our Standards and Restoring Our Good Names - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Grant McCracken is a cultural anthropologist. He holds a PhD from the University of Chicago. He was the founder of the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum, and a cofounder of the Artisanal Economies Project. Grant has taught at Harvard, the University of Cambridge, and MIT. He advises a wide variety of companies and individuals, including Google, Netflix, Nike, the Ford Foundation, Kanye West, the Boston Book Festival, and the White House (no, the other one). He lives in Connecticut with his wife and three cats. 

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Chapter 1: Symptoms of an Honor Shortage CHAPTER 1 Symptoms of an Honor Shortage

1.1 The Harvard Soccer Scandal

The Harvard soccer scandal of 2016 took people by surprise. The men’s soccer team devised a so-called scouting report on the women’s team, a spreadsheet in which each woman was assigned a sexual position and her desirability ranked. The report called one woman the “hottest and most STD ridden.”1

Eventually this document found its way into the school newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, and all hell broke loose.

Drew Faust, president of the university, investigated and concluded that the “actions of the… team were not isolated to one year or the actions of a few individuals.”2 Oops.

Faust said that when she quizzed the members of the soccer team, they were “not initially forthcoming about their involvement.” This is Ivy League code for “when confronted, they lied.” Given an opportunity to do the right thing and confess their sins, these Harvard gentlemen choose to double down.

People hoped it might eventually serve as a teachable moment. But alas, no. When Rakesh Khurana, the dean of the college, was asked repeatedly by the Crimson to comment on the first outbreak of the scandal, he replied,

I was not Dean of Harvard College in 2012 and do not have knowledge of [the] particular email [in question], I cannot speak to the alleged conduct of these particular students.3

Alleged conduct? No knowledge? Was Khurana the dean or a lawyer? When presiding over a moral crisis as bad as anything Harvard had ever endured, he chose to duck.

But surely, people persisted, the team would come to its senses and apologize. And in fact, the 2016 team did send a letter of apology to the Crimson. But they also insisted that the letter run unsigned. The letter declares,

We wholeheartedly promise to do anything in our power to build a more respectful and harmonious athletic field, classroom, and Harvard community.4

Anything, that is, but take responsibility. Stand up and be counted is what a decent person would do. The apology was a “crocodile confession”—all lamentation, no accountability.

What’s even weirder is that the Crimson accepted the letter unsigned. Surely someone on staff protested, “An anonymous apology isn’t an apology! That’s not how apologies work.” The letter ran anyway.

It was as if the scandal were designed to shine a light into every corner of the school. A group of students acted like scoundrels. When confronted, they lied. When asked to comment, Harvard administrators ducked. When given the chance to confess their sins, the players refused. When push came to shove, the Crimson caved. Everyone acted badly.

You might say, “Oh, for Pete’s sake, this is just boys being boys. Lighten up a little. This is harmless fun.”

It was not harmless fun.

Hannah Natanson was one of the women who played for Harvard. She quit the team in July of 2017. She told herself that the scouting report did not enter into her decision. But a few months later, she noticed something.

[T]he joy I used to find in exercise leached out. Every time I stepped outside in tight-fitting athletic clothes, I became hyper-conscious of my body. I curated a catalogue of faults: my ankles (spindly), my thighs (fleshy), my stomach (protruding), my shoulders (broad and manly).

I found myself constantly wondering whether passersby were watching me run.

I began to go on shorter runs. Then I began to run less often. One day midway through junior year, I stopped running entirely. I started avoiding mirrors. I stopped looking down in the shower. I went on sudden, absurd diets, vowing to alternate fasting with all-vegetable meals—before breaking all my own rules and ordering Falafel Corner to The Crimson at 2 or 3 or 4 a.m. I gained weight.

Like almost anyone my age, I logged onto Facebook a lot. I clicked through photos posted by members of the men’s soccer team.

Some of them had graduated. They appeared to have moved to major cities. They had new jobs, girlfriends.

I remembered how, back in November 2016, some members of the women’s team had wondered whether the scouting reports would affect the men’s post-graduate lives. We asked each other, What will happen to them?

Nobody asked—aloud—what would happen to us.5

The scouting report was an act of violence.

The Twitter feed for the Harvard soccer team stopped abruptly on November 1, 2016, when the scandal hit. It started up again December 14 with a tweet pointing to an article on the official website of Harvard Athletics, Go Crimson. This article said, breathlessly and with no mention of the scandal, that the soccer team had given out awards for the 2016 season. In particular,

Senior Andrew Wheeler-Omiunu [was awarded the] Seamus Malin ’62 Award… given to the player that best demonstrates sportsmanship, love of the game and commitment to the university.6

Really. Apparently, someone on the team that took a hammer to Hannah Natanson’s self-esteem really believed in sportsmanship. Apparently, someone on the team that helped destroy Hannah’s gift for the game really loved soccer. Apparently, someone on the team that had just brought disgrace and ridicule to Harvard was really committed to the university. Just saying. Go Crimson.7

The Harvard soccer scandal is many things. It is a failure of nerve, dignity, judgment, and decency. It was a failure to protect Harvard women from Harvard men. Everyone was diminished—female players, male players, the sport, the administrators, the dean, the Crimson, its journalists, the college, and the university. When given a chance to stand up and be counted, almost everybody folded.

The cynical among us might say, “Harvard has always been a place of deep and abiding hypocrisy. It was never about building character. In fact, it was a place the rich sent their children to learn how to conceal bad behavior behind good manners.”

But this is an institution that has behaved honorably. Harvard sent nearly forty thousand students to fight in World Wars I and II. However, the soccer scandal didn’t offer much evidence of that storied decency. Harvard is probably the oldest institution in America charged with improving the morals of American youth, and at some point, clearly, it faltered.

Could the scandal have been prevented by a new honor code at Harvard? What if there was a culture that moved one of the players to speak out? “Guys, this is stupid, diminishing, and wrong. This spreadsheet dishonors us because it dishonors them. It has to stop.” In this more perfect world, team members would come to their senses and say, “Oh, right. What were we thinking? Sorry.”

The next question is the tough one: is it possible to build such a culture?

1.2 Wells Fargo and a Devil’s Bargain

Richard Kovacevich blew his arm out while playing baseball at...