The Curious Case Of Section X
Rhetorical Hierarchy and Hierarchical Psychosis
Can you imagine that in the Young India Fellowship, a group exists which is secretive in nature?
A bunch of dominating and arrogant chaps who identify themselves as elite, rich and privileged.
An exclusive group whose entry procedures are highly selective and are highly demeaning, most of the times, to the fellow class-men. And yet everyone denies to report such incidents or the very nature of this group’s existence! These people through their actions claim themselves superior and hence sit at the top of pyramid or hierarchical setup.
Don’t worry, our very own elite Indian Ivy League, Ashoka University, doesn’t have such a breed yet; and I hope it would NEVER.
But there is one school within an Ivy wherein such a hierarchical group exists; it’s none other than Harvard Business School.
Before discussing further about this case in point. Let’s first understand, what is hierarchy?
American literary theorist, Kenneth Burke, describes hierarchy as an inescapable principle operating in human social existence.
The quest for order produces authority, and the distribution of authority introduces the “spirit” of hierarchy that infuses most human societies (Jasinski 300).
To put it in a simpler terms; wherever, there is a group formation, an order is established which is followed by hierarchy just like ranking, grading, etc. which are essentially tools of comparison and evaluation of things against another. These tools, as mentioned above, are essential part of human’s social behaviour or existence.
Burke’s concept of hierarchy might be thought of in two ways,
1) Hierarchies have a corporeal or material existence in various “social differentiations and stratifications that are due to the division of labor and to corresponding distinctions in the possession of property” (Jasinski 300).
Example,
Ivy League schools are more prestigious than regional state universities, and their graduates typically find jobs with greater ease and make more money.
or,
The person who drives a BMW has higher status than the person who drives a Ford.
These are just a few of the ways in which egalitarian American society is hierarchically structured.
2) If this first sense is materialistic, then we also can find a second, more idealistic inflection in Burke’s discussions of hierarchy. Hierarchy is a pervasive “spirit” or “principle” operating in human social existence. It is inescapable. Ranking, grading, comparing, and evaluating one thing (e.g., an idea, a person) against another appear to be ubiquitous features of “social thinking” and illustrate Burke’s contention that humanity is “goaded” by the spirit of hierarchy (Jasinski 300).
The most suitable or extreme example of such features of “social thinking” or “spirit” of hierarchy is:
The so-called Section X, an on-again-off again secret society of ultra-wealthy, mostly male, mostly international students known for decadent parties and travel.
Here are some statements made with respect to Section X:
“Someone made the decision for me that I’m not pretty or wealthy enough to be in Section X,” said Brooke Boyarsky, at the time a first-year MBA Class of 2013 MBA at Harvard.
According to the story, another incident earlier this year involved a female first-year student who was informed that the men in her section had voted her to have “the second best rack” in section.
“The Section X dynamics really deteriorate the section togetherness,” said Kate Lewis, a 2013 graduate
“By the end of this academic year, Section X had become an adjective on campus for anything exclusive and moneyed, with one student talking about a “mini Section X dynamic” within her real section,” according to the Times
“Until then, no one else had publicly said ‘Section X.” They organise “the real parties, the parties where it’s a really limited list, the extravagant vacations — I mean really extravagant,” said Brooke Boyarsky.
A reader named Ken H said that the tone at the school in the 1970s was downright egalitarian, and that anyone who “flashed money around” would have earned jeers. “Maybe what has changed isn’t so much H.B.S., but America,” he said.
As you can see, there are some hardcore allegations as well made by HBS alums.
Raw Materials of Hierarchies
Burke, in his text, has rightly said —
Race, ethnicity, gender, class, and region are some of the raw materials out of which hierarchies are constructed.
It turns out that Section X is actually a product of the below mentioned social raw materials.
Race & Ethnicity — White and Asian
Gender — Mostly male
Class — Ultra wealthy
Region — 100 MBA students from South America, the Middle East and Asia; and a group of mainly Princeton undergrads
Clearly, white, male, ultra-wealthy are the characteristics of social groups which are found at the top of other hierarchies as well.
Mystery and Mystification in Hierarchies
An important implication of the spirit of hierarchy is the way in which it can enhance the conditions of mystery (difference and otherness) and mystification.
The underlying idea of Burkeian term mystification is —
A way in which language can be used to obscure or distort the contingent nature of our social practices and institutions and the central events that shape our public and political culture (Jasinski 378).
Kertzer describes an example in which language and political ritual interact to produce mystification is —
The ritual of ‘free elections’… In the United States, elections foster the illusion that American government is the result of the free, informed choice of the entire citizenry and that all are equal in deciding questions of public policy” (p. 49). What election rituals obscure, Kertzer suggested, is the reality of Wall Street investment bankers and the other obscure individuals who shape public policy (Jasinski 378).
Another literary scholar, Duncan, noted that during mystification,
“Those on top tend to deny or cloak division, difference, and disorganisation” (Jasinski 301).
Anyone attempting to oppose “those on top” must find a way of subverting the hierarchical address (the appeal from a superior to an inferior or, perhaps, to someone with roughly equal social standing), but this task is made more difficult given that the hierarchy has been rendered obscure through linguistic mystification.
Such a denial of Section X existence has come from The Harbus, the student run news organisation of The Harvard Business School.
We’re fairly certain that there is no “secret” group of people with any sort of code, credo, mission or pact that call themselves “Section X”. […] upon our investigative deep dive, we learned that some of the people we asked for interviews took great offense at being “accused” of being in “Section X”. Upon exploring the negative vibe that comes with the name, we understood why these people were offended and we honestly don’t blame them. I mean, who likes being singled out as, basically, a terrible person?
Through the above statements made by The Harbus, it’s safe to assume that the hierarchical organisations try to mystify the internal setup and process. Those at the top, as part of the organisation, remain in denial to any criticism or offense being thrown at them.
“The No.1 thing you should take away […] is that no one is putting their real name,” one member of the class of 2013 wrote on nytimes.com, citing fear that strong opinions “could limit future options.”
Many of the school’s top donors and alumni are members of the same ultra-moneyed culture that some students criticise. And because many students attend business school in the specific hope of building a network of influential contacts, they tend to fear offending anyone, especially wealthy classmates who might one day provide connections and financing (Kantor 1).
Hierarchical Psychosis
Sufferers of such hierarchies, hence, become victim to the mystery and mystification being caused by those sitting at the top of pyramid.
Burke says that in some cases, people lose the ability (or perhaps never possessed the ability) to recognise the contingency of any particular hierarchy (Jasinski 301).
He wrote, “When the enactment of hierarchy becomes so dogmatic and the stages of development so rigid that doubt, question, or creation of new hierarchies are no longer possible and, indeed, are punishable, we enter the realm of hierarchical psychosis” (Jasinski 301).
Hierarchical psychosis, Burke argued, is problematic because of the tendency of those under its spell to turn to scapegoating as a means of maintaining order and preserving the status quo.
Scapegoating
Burke maintained that a society might be redeemed or purified, and its guilt removed, in one of two ways.
One strategy is mortification or self-victimization in which the members of a society internalize the “sins” that threaten the social order and engage in other behavioral reforms.
The other strategy for achieving social redemption is victimage or scapegoating. Scapegoating develops through the principle of externalization.
Some individual or group is selected, and all of the society’s problems-its sins-are blamed on the chosen individual or group. An “us versus them” antithesis is established. The selected individual or group then begins to function, as Burke wrote, as a “sacrificial receptacle” or “vessel” for all that is wrong with the society.
For example, some people today believe that illegal immigrants are serving as a scapegoat for the nation’s economic anxieties. When politicians bash illegal immigrants, they are symbolically slaying their scapegoat, and when they vote to cut off medical care or educational benefits, their actions begin to slide toward the literal (Jasinski 504).
However, hierarchy is inescapable, it will infect anyone or any group that manages to displace the reigning structure.
Griffin, for example, noted how the persona of the movement advocate attempting to displace the status quo will necessarily shift if the movement is successful. The advocate who begins as “prophet” (preaching impiety and urging a rejection of the dominant order and its hierarchy) becomes a “priest” (preaching a new piety or orthodoxy-a new order-with a new hierarchy) (Jasinski 301).
In case of Section X, there has been many scapegoat incidences wherein certain HBS alums have shared their negative anecdotes and experiences. However, the denial by The Harbus certainly mystifies the whole situation.
“Without strong opinions, backed by passion, it’s unlikely that anything will change at H.B.S. in the near term,” the commenter said.
We can only hope this “unlikely” turns into likeliness, when some individual or group can demystify the whole controversy, and there is an eventual emergence of a new priest of a new hierarchical order as claimed by Burke.
Works Cited
Jasinski, James L. Sourcebook on Rhetoric. SAGE Publications, Inc, 2001.
Byrne, John A. “Section X: Harvard’s Secret Society.” Poets&Quants, Poets&Quants, 3 Jan. 2018, poetsandquants.com/2013/09/08/section-x-harvards-secret-society/.
“The Truth about ‘Section X’…and The Black & White Society.” The Harbus, 6 May 2014, www.harbus.org/2014/the-truth-about-section-xand-the-black-white-society/.
Kantor, Jodi. “Class Is Seen Dividing Harvard Business School.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Oct. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/education/harvard-business-students-see-class-as-divisive-an-issue-as-gender.html.
Originally published at medium.com on March 6, 2019.
