Justin hopes to become politically active in his home state of California. Daniel will pursue a degree in human rights at the London School of Economics next year, planning to become a human rights lawyer. In the short run, Kieran will travel to Arizona and New Mexico to write short stories based on Native American folk tales, and wants eventually to be involved in cinema or writing. Anthony will continue to work in theater and film. Sam wants to travel the globe as a documentary filmmaker. Nick will continue on to graduate school to nourish his love of East Asian studies and linguistics. Aaron wants to merge his interest in politics and journalism. Chris will spend next year working with a nonprofit in Cuba.

These differences are often present in the roommates’ frequent disagreements.

“You can think of our room as four different married couples that have been constantly changing, with divorces, and bitterness,” Kieran says.

Sam breaks the group into two camps—the roommates who are more idealistic and those who are more comfortable to work within an established framework.

This divide manifests itself in anything from small disagreements about wearing a funky-colored rather than a dark blue tie, to larger decisions like choosing to be a politician instead of a documentary filmmaker.

Sam came to Harvard on the heels of a trip to Kenya with a group of high school students working to build a house. On his first-year housing preference form, he remembers, he indicated that he planned to center his college years around political activism.

He expected to be like his father, Michael D. Felsen ’71, who protested outside University Hall during the 1969 takeover. Sam grew up with stories of his father’s refusal to walk across the stage at his own Commencement and his subsequent move to a commune. As a labor lawyer, he came to the Yard to advise members of the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) before their own three-week-long occupation of Massachusetts Hall in the spring of 2001.

Sam attended a few PSLM meetings as a first-year, but it just didn’t feel right—everyone knew each other already, he remembers, and they all seemed to take themselves so seriously.

Sam describes a photograph of his father and his best college friend on their own graduation three decades ago, standing outside Adams with black armbands.

“I feel sort of guilty that I didn’t continue that tradition,” he says. But he’s had time for other things, like his social studies classes and simply enjoying himself. His first-year friends from Canaday, Daniel and Justin, have helped with that.

And in the room of eight, each perspective has enriched the other, Sam says, forcing the roommates to justify their beliefs and assumptions.

“I espouse all these values, but don’t necessarily keep them all—and Justin can point that out better than anyone,” he says. This “hypocrisy” might take the form of criticizing materialism but then springing for a pair of expensive sneakers.

The clashes and compromises have been “important,” Sam says. “In graduating, they can be a little more open-minded, and I can be less flimsy in my values.”

Saying Goodbye

Daniel compares his experience to that of his twin brother, now a senior at Cambridge University back home in England.