Harvard vs. the School Of Hard Knocks

By Tamala M. Edwards/Boston

It happened by accident last year that Pine Street Inn, a Boston homeless shelter and job-training center, held its graduation on the same day as Harvard's. But this year director Erik Payne Butler scheduled his ceremony last Thursday on purpose--a reminder, he says, that his graduates should be as celebrated as those folks across the Charles River. And there was an added juxtaposition this year: at Pine Street the keynote speaker was former Labor Secretary Robert Reich; Harvard welcomed Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan to speak to alums and graduates. The two men have very different views of the economy. In his memoir, Reich imagined that a frank exchange would involve his assailing Greenspan as a "robber-baron pimp" and the central banker's calling him a "Bolshevik dwarf."

And indeed the day showed both the best of times and the worst of possibilities--but not always in the ways you might expect. At Pine Street the yellow and white tent was donated, as were the flowers. A cerulean sky and cool morning air hung over the neighborhood's old brick buildings. Reich pondered his speech, in which he would remind the recently derelict grads that the great economy isn't trickling down to everyone; that the vagaries of life--and the inevitable economic downturn--would try them again. Couldn't he be more optimistic on this, their big day? "I'm going to try," he said wanly.

But then the 75 graduates marched in. Many wore donated clothes, and proudly. The bodily signs of high off-road mileage--sallow skin, dull hair--were outshone by the bright glint in their eyes. And Reich was quickly outdone by student speaker Fred McLemore, 34, whose natty gray suit and mustard bow tie were at odds with his story. He dropped out of school in the eighth grade and became a homeless crack addict. With his last dollar, he came to the shelter two years ago. Now he leaves with an internship-cum-job in computers. "My boss is here, and she wants to hire me, and I'm going!" he said, to the roar of the crowd.

And as they headed out into a new life, the graduates weren't thinking about what might be taken away but what could be got back. Albert Merrill, 55, a former clerical worker, holds out his 28-day pin and six-month coin, and next month will pass his first year sober. He dreams of the day when he can walk back into the life of his ex-wife and kids. "This is a gift," he says quietly of his diploma.

To a man, they say they're not jealous of their Harvard counterparts. Indeed, they believe they have an advantage. "I'm turned around and could be headed toward Harvard," says reformed crack addict Howard James, 40. "But one turn for them--loss of a job, alcoholism--they could be coming to Pine Street."

A 15-minute subway ride away, the lawn in front of Harvard's Tercentenary Theatre is plush, and the crowd seems plump with well-being. Alum Jerome Vered, 41, an HBO researcher, feels fortunate that he hasn't faced "a real curveball, like a spouse or child dying." Tamara Remy, 24, a new Harvard Law grad, holds pink flowers and high hopes. "Just today we were wondering if there's a President among us," she says of her class.

Greenspan tells the graduates they are embarking on "a material existence that neither my generation nor any that preceded it could have even remotely imagined." He adds that the gains from the long bull market in stocks "regrettably...have not been as widely spread across households." About 40 students protest, walking out of his speech carrying huge red balloons. They wind up in the Square, between a bank and Au Bon Pain. Down the Square, the Tasty, a famous cheap diner, is the latest old fixture to be replaced by high-rent glam: this time an Abercrombie & Fitch. And so it feels sweet and ironic but futile as the scraggly crowd rails against Greenspan and disgusting capitalism.

But then someone reads from Emerson's "The American Scholar": "The world is nothing. The man is all." Looked at that way, the Harvard graduates--hey, this is no easy school to get through--deserve commendation. But the men and women of Pine Street? Now that calls for some irrational exuberance.