KRISHNAN N. SUBRAHMANIAN ’03

He’s a lot like Mister Rogers. If you look beyond the mass of shoulder-length curls and the colorful hats, you’ll see that Krishnan N. Subrahmanian ’03 very much wants to welcome you to his neighborhood.

In fact, this gangly bundle of energy would like to welcome most everyone to his neighborhood, and it seems that people—from Harvard students in every possible social category to Teach for America recruiters—are happy to join.

On a recent walk to the Quad, loping along Garden Street with a navy blue jacket draped over his head, Krish pauses five times to catch up with friends. “South Africa!” he exclaims to one, breaking out in a grin when he confirms they’ll both be there next year.

Six more friends approach him during lunch in Currier House. Krish has greeted 11 friends in the space of an hour, or nearly one every five minutes.

But these interludes aren’t just meet-and-greets for the popularly elected mayor of the Class of 2003.

“He genuinely is as nice as he comes across to everyone, which I think is pretty rare,” says his best friend Deirdre A. Colgan ‘03. “He’s not one of those people that will see you in the hall and say ‘hi,’ and keep on walking—he definitely wants to stop and talk and know how you’re doing.”

Indeed, Colgan adds that the first class marshal’s desire to connect with those in his community is so sincere that it can put a damper on her social life.

“From my perspective, it kind of sucks because it takes forever to go anywhere with him,” she says.

But to Krish, who talks often of “community” and “love,” taking time out for individuals represents the core of a personal philosophy that has crystallized over his college career.

His ideal community, and one he would like to see at Harvard, he says, is one where people would feel “safe, respected and loved at all times,” along the lines of the rules at the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Connecticut, where he has spent the past two summers caring for seriously ill children.

“As much as this is a wonderful place to learn, it’s a place also where you live,” Krish says. “And it’s really important to make sure that people are part of a community or at least have a positive atmosphere to be in, and I think people have power in making that atmosphere a reality.”

Finding His Way

K.P. and Indira Subrahmanian raised Krish and his older sister, Chitra, near St. Paul, Minn., where they settled after emigrating from India in 1974. His father is a chemist at 3M and his mother, a diminutive bank teller who can just barely peek over the window. Both are “ridiculously supportive,” he says.

His small size necessitated a sort of reinvention in high school. Krish had been an athlete while growing up, but he turned to theater and mock trial when he realized he would not make the baseball and basketball teams his sophomore year.

He continued to pursue his dramatic bent once he arrived in Cambridge.