Every night, scores of Harvard students look up from their unmarked and neglected Ec 10 source-books into the deceptively silent darkness, wondering what the rest of the world is up to. Gazing into neighboring windows, we wonder what could be going on behind the closed curtains. The quiet world of Harvard's "watchers in the night" is a lot more widespread than one might guess.

Anthropological allure

"It didn't start until this year, when I got quadded," says one resident of Currier house, preferring to remain anonymous so as not to blow her cover. "I'd be taking a study break or something and go up to the balcony [of Currier towers] and just look at the stars and airplanes-- but then I realized that you can look straight into people's windows. People just don't even think about it." Perhaps active nightlife is rare, ("Come on, it is the Quad after all," says the Currier spy) but there's almost always something to see. "I get really interested in just watching people sit at their desks," she comments. "The occasional nose-picker, you know. And then there're also the people who wander around their rooms, when they think they're studying. There's a whole lot of action that you can't really explain--and everything looks different when you're only seeing part of the room and the action. Everyone looks different." For example, at an angle from above, bald spots are much more visible and can be easily exposed. For the "Currier Spectator," her experience, as a casual observer of private lives has been a shaping force in her daily interaction with dormmates. "I'll run into people in the dining hall and want to be, like, 'why did you spend 10 minutes last night staring at the back of your roommate's head?' Or, 'I saw you smoking in your room, bad boy.' But I try not to make faces or giggle."

The spectator is quick to add that she's quite strict about exactly what situations are observable, and which must be left unseen. "Some things are absolutely intriguing--for example, watching people put on make-up or admire themselves in the mirror. But I don't want to watch people making out." Of course, this isn't a particularly frequent occupational hazard, but even at Harvard, people do hook up, (all too often right in front of their windows.) "Exposed flesh is just out. I'm not a pervert. It's more like an anthropological study." She mentions that she may try to integrate this into an upcoming photo project ("because people are so much better when they're not posing for you") though she's not sure about the legal implications for displaying such unauthorized and intimate portraits.

A Nude Study

The Harvard first-year living away from home for the first time finally got the opportunity to spend his days and nights exactly as he chooses. What to do?

"I'll admit that I spend a lot of my time thinking about naked people," says one Harvard Yardling. "That's just what fascinates me. So this year, I've found that the best way to procrastinate is to watch people going around their room naked."

She explains that the prime time for viewing is usually around midnight, when people are going to sleep. "That's just the one time when everyone has to get naked, and when I'm sitting at my desk looking out the window. It's so much more interesting to see someone walk perfectly unashamed across their common room and check their e-mail in the nude than to check your own e-mail."

How does she get any work done? "Well, eventually people are mostly all asleep--there are a few that stay up, but it's less of a prime-time atmosphere. Also, it's really interesting, but it's not, like, really amazing. If there were a ton of hotties in Matthews, I might get more obsessed with it. But really, it's no swooning-and-passing-out-over-your-homework material. Just neat to watch. It sort of makes my skin crawl." Ours too.

Goodnight sweetheart

"Living above the entrance to Kirkland is good, because arrivals and departures tell a lot about what is going on with people in the dorm," says Katie J. Wink '00. "You see who's getting in a car with someone else. You see who's coming to visit more often. You see if someone fixes their hair before they go into the courtyard and might be seen."

Wink professes to be a "closet gossip-monger" when it comes to the activities of her dormmates. "The best is when you catch someone on a quasi-walk-of-shame. When it's still dark out, but you can just tell that they are all flushed and touseled from, you know, hooking up."

Listening at keyholes

An often neglected side of Harvard's world of undercover observation is non-visual apprehension: what we don't see may be the most interesting action. Literally, that is. Harvard's architects seem to have had a special bias towards the connecting fire door; great for fires, but also an amazing audio window into the lives of neighbors.

"I'm the farthest thing in the world from a peeping tom," says one junior in Quincy House, "but you can't help hearing things." Living on the third floor of New Quincy, she and her roommates have a unique perspective on the "goings-on" of the tutor suite next door: "My room-mates and I hear [goings-on] every morning at 9 a.m...repeated moaning through the bathroom fire door like clockwork. People in Greenwich could set clocks by this."