<p>“being unkind, mean and cantankerous is a right Harvard should not be shaming its students into relinquishing.”</p>
<p>It’s a molehill to me either way, and I don’t care whether they use a pledge or not. But why should the college be neutral on the question on nice vs. mean within the community?</p>
<p>It’s a residential college, not an apartment complex. If you’re being unkind and mean to the students you live with, IMHO you ought to be ashamed. I think it’s a good thing for the school to communicate to the students upon arrival that it wants them to think about consideration for others. The admissions office tries to weed out the jerks in the first place. Do you think they should stop rejecting applicants on the basis of unkindness?</p>
<p>At some colleges, I’d be very sympathetic to the idea that signing isn’t voluntary if it’s public, etc. But this is Harvard. If you can’t shrug and explain that you disagree with the idea of a pledge for whatever reason, it’s the wrong school for you. And unless the admitted students have changed a lot since I was there, no one is going to give a crap who signed and who didn’t.</p>