Light says that students who are able to integrate their outside interests with their academic pursuits are the ones who most relish their college experience.

“Some of the happiest students that I’ve had here at Harvard have used their extracurricular activities as an opportunity to connect what they do outside the classroom with things they are learning inside the classroom,” he says.

Ben T. Jackson ’03 echoes this sentiment as he considers his most rewarding college experience. For a linguistics paper this year, he was able apply his knowledge of vocal percussion, an education he developed singing co-ed a capella with the Callbacks.

“That was a really cool tie-in for something that I wouldn’t have learned how to do if I hadn’t done an extracurricular,” he says.

Often the solutions proposed for a perceived disconnect between academics and extracurriculars involves some form of formal integration.

Some have suggested that the restructuring of the College administration to consolidate the responsibilities of undergraduate education and student life in one office will help to break down the separation between extracurriculars and academics.

“It seemed odd to me to have one office in charge of extracurriculars and another office in charge of curricular policy with respect to the arts and nobody in a position to sort of bring them together,” University President Lawrence H. Summers said in an interview.

Associate Dean of the College David P. Illingworth ’71 also envisions a better integration of academics and extracurricular activities.

“I hate to see academics and extracurriculars in a way pitted against each other,” Illingworth says. “People should be relating their studies to what they do. It’s not what you do, it’s how you reflect on it academically. There’s not going to be credit per se for doing community service, but there are ways in which it all comes together and can be combined with academics.”

Chopra offers his own plan for merging academics and extracurricular activities. He hopes for more formal faculty support of student organizations.

“It’s unfortunate that in many ways we’ve created a system where you have to pick between your school work or your academic work and your nonacademic work because there’s not a better connection,” he says. “I think there needs to be more organized frameworks that are better connected to faculty and alumni.”

However, some—especially those involved in the arts—have been wary of a marriage between extracurricular interests and academic coursework. Critics worry that with a more formal structure some students who have less experience, or a more casual interest in an extracurricular will be crowded out.

Lewis says the solution of simply offering academic credit for extracurricular activities misses the point.

“There is a tendency, mistaken I believe, to propose bridging the extracurricular and academic realms by literally merging them—perhaps giving academic credit for public service activities, or making better efforts to bring extracurricular theatre experiences into course in literary fields,” Lewis wrote Kirby in February.

Lewis says administrators should take as a lesson from extracurriculars’ popularity the importance of encouraging students to build relationships with other students around a given activity.