Nobody Makes Trig Cheers Anymore
Regarding the column by Jenny Lind G ["In Spite of Itself, MIT Musters Its Own Peculiar Spirit," Feb. 4], I have a few clarifications.
First, it's "Haarved," and we do have a tradition of hacking Harvard/Yale games (note that classic MIT methods involve much animal cruelty), even though we both know our own strengths and limitations well enough not to have a real rivalry. It simply wouldn't be sporting.
Second, the person described as making the cheers must have been a new student, or else he would not have been shouting trigonometry cheers - too passe and unlikely given the two-semester calculus requirement. Perhaps during the next Independent Activities Period, Charm School could offer a class on how to make proper nerdy cheers? Third, the person was probably an engineer, since most of us non-engineering majors at MIT (biologists, anthropologists, chemists, historians, what have you) won't be caught dead uttering mathematically-oriented cheers - too formulaic.
Finally, who needs a "distinguishable rival" to boost our school spirit when there is the entire world out there to laugh at?
Hsienchang Thomas Chiu '96
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