A large portion of the student body at every American college is "drowning themselves in pleasure and mindlessness". The simple, naturalistic explanation is that when Harvard students abandon themselves to partying and procrastination, it is for the same reason that students at Boston University or Colorado State do it: i.e., they're young, horny, and on the loose for the first time in life, and their mental circuitry for self-regulation isn't fully wired up yet. But this account does not satisfy the Harvard man, who is at pains to distinguish his habits of procrastinton as themselves the mark of a Harvard man, a proof of belonging to an elite order.