"Once we sat out by John Harvard and handed out cheeseballs to the tourists, and sometimes we walk by and yell the [Statue of Three Lies] punchline before the tour guide can say it," Fokol says. "But [tourists] aren't an inconvenience at all."
In interviews of other first-years, none said that the tourists in Harvard Yard were anything other than a minor inconvenience. Still, some University Hall administrators say that tourist crowds sometimes make them attractions in themselves.
"All of us are affected by it," Epps says. "I can't go out of my office without facing the odd Polaroid."
A second, less visible problem results from the lack of contact between the University and private tour companies stopping at the Yard.
"You just can't control every tour group and every visitor. It would be great if everyone came through a central location," Mitch says. "But just think about the number of tours that go through here that nobody sees."
News office officials say that these independent operators frequently give out outdated or simply wrong information as part of their tour.
"I mean, just make up a story--you're a tour guide, and people want to walk through the Yard and hear some story," Mitch says. "I've heard dates wrong, building names wrong and the folklore wrong."
Finn says that his information is meticulously researched, and that he tries to present his tourists with an in-depth presentation in the Yard.
"I read from a number of different sources, not just tour books, because those are mostly wrong anyway," Finn says. "I think I do a fairly decent job for what I'm trying to achieve."
To combat misinformation, the News Office encourages tour groups to use undergraduate tour guides, usually taken from the Crimson Key Society. However, most commercial tours still use their own guides.
"We want the information to be accurate," says University spokesperson Joe Wrinn.
"Could [tourism] be managed better? Yes--through better publications and better connections to tour groups," Huppe says. These new publications include The Harvard Guide, a book-length guide to campus sights; a new line of informational postcards; and a historical timeline currently in the works.
"We've got to address the needs of literally thousands of people coming through every week, so they can learn a little bit about Harvard and at the same time don't disrupt the school," Wrinn says.
"We've got to make it so that people can expect something when they get here," he says, "without Harvard becoming Disneyland."