“House master” is the name by which heads of Harvard’s halls of residence have been known since God was young. Well, no longer.
The name has now been abolished following a number of – justified! – complaints from students blessed with high racial sensitivity. The word ‘master’, they explained, evokes the time of slavery, when black people had to address their owners in this subservient manner.
This link, however indirect it may sound, is so traumatic that the more sensitive students can’t properly concentrate on immersing themselves in such time-honoured academic subjects as Condom Studies, the Jedi Way of Training, Philosophy and Star Trek, Harry Potter Studies and the History of Lace Knitting (such courses are indeed on offer at American universities; I didn’t make it up).
As someone who has devoted his whole life to the tireless fight for every good cause anybody puts up as such, I can only welcome this development. The nature of progress is such that people get more sensitive about more things, and surely heightened sensitivity is a sign of a well-developed personality.
My only regret is that this measure hasn’t gone far enough. However, one does have to start somewhere, and it’s the duty of older people like me to guide our brittle, delicate youngsters farther down the road leading to emotionally safe havens.
In that spirit I suggest that ‘house master’ be changed for ‘my main man’. Also, art courses must stop, effective immediately, talking about Old Masters. What’s wrong with Painters Who Have Been Dead for a Rather Long Time? Nothing at all, I dare say.
While we’re on the subject, what’s that with master’s degrees? What are these degrees in, slave driving? And don’t give me that bunk about the word deriving from the Latin word magister, meaning ‘teacher’. A trauma is anything the traumatised person says it is, and not every traumatised person should be expected to be up on Latin etymology.
Henceforth a Harvard MBA must, repeat must, become an Advanced Maven of Every Basic Attainment, AMOEBA for short.
Moving right along, a masterly performance by a musician must be referred to as a ‘cool gig, dude’. And if the musician then gives a master class it must be called a ‘mass class’, thus ridding the term of any racial connotations and also emphasising the mandatory egalitarian nature of any relationship between teacher and pupil.
A field of endeavour, or indeed a playing field, brings back the wounding memories of cotton fields south of the Mason-Dixon line, where Afro-Americans (who in those days were shamefully called something else) toiled under the blazing sun to the accompaniment of the whistling sounds produced by their overseers’ bullwhips.
May I suggest ‘my thing’ instead of ‘field of endeavour’ and ‘shake ‘n bake place’ for ‘playing field’? You’re free to come up with your own suggestions if you don’t like mine.
And while you’re at it, think also of an inoffensive term for ‘magnetic field’. ‘That magnetic thing’ works for me, but don’t let me prejudice your thinking.
It’s almost embarrassing to state the obvious, in this case that the word ‘cotton’ has no place in the proverbial groves, even if it only appears on the label inside a shirt collar. Students must be forbidden, on pain of expulsion, to wear cotton garments that run the risk of sending the more sensitive among them into an irreversible tailspin.
Lycra provides a perfect, tasteful substitute to the ‘c’ word, or else I’d recommend those shell suits that are so favoured in the urban hotbeds of sensitivity.
Well, I’m not proposing to mention every potentially offensive word that has no place in the academic vocabulary. My purpose is more modest: to congratulate the faculty of Harvard University on this progressive initiative and outline other possible avenues for advancing therapeutic lexicography.
It’s about time we whipped the English language into shape…. Oops, ever so sorry. Forget I said ‘whipped’. I’ll never forgive myself if I caused a Harvard student to roll on the floor frothing at the mouth.