Eliot House

In the late 1990s, an Adams House resident staged a multi-media performance called the “Dancing Deviant,” which attracted the attention of the campus for its nudity and sexually explicit material.

According to Geertrui Spaepen ’99, this event was emblematic of the quirky atmosphere that defined her Adams House experience.

While Spaepen describes the artistic quality of her undergraduate House, others had strikingly different experiences in their Houses before randomization —from the athletic Mather to Eliot, remembered by some as a bastion of elitism.

When then-Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett ’57 instituted the change in housing assignments from a system where blocking groups could rank their top four House choices to a completely randomized selection process in 1995, some worried the move would spell the end of House spirit and community.

And although Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68—who carried out Jewett’s plan—says the Houses have become more equal, the personalities that defined some Houses before randomization have faded.

The envelopes first-years received under their door early this morning will assign them to Houses that are radically different than they were just five years ago, when Houses were still inhabited by students who had picked them.

An Artistic Oasis

According to Loker Professor of English Robert Kiely, who was Master of Adams House for 26 years, the Plympton Street residence was always characterized by an artsy feeling.

“The Adams House students over time liked their reputation for being somewhat different and offbeat,” Kiely says. “It was almost always a place where a lot of actors and actresses convened.”

Spaepen says the eccentric atmosphere was so established in Adams that she felt like an intruder when she entered the House as a member of the first randomized class.

“We were not actually that welcomed when we arrived,” Spaepen says. “Adams already had that snooty feeling.”

Despite randomization, Spaepen says Adams’ unique personality remained strong during her undergraduate years.

She says the four or five performances of the “Dancing Deviant” put on per year constituted only a few of many free-spirited Adams events.

“He did a naked dance,” Spaepen says. “There were things like that all the time.”

Even the formals, a stuffy tradition in many of Harvard’s 12 Houses, were wilder in Adams.