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House Wars Fail To Ignite

House war descends on Harvard, but fails to start a revolution

Despite the Mather council’s dedication to total war, they failed to inflame interhouse tension across campus.

Kirkland House HoCo Co-Chair Adam Kalamchi ’05 said Kirkland was already a “pretty tight House” and did not have anything to prove to Mather.

“The war really annoyed us,” he said. “By the time we had thought about retaliating, the war was so one-sided that it wasn’t worth getting involved.”

Kalamchi said Kirkland students expressed outrage after Maats and his friends distributed flyers outside Annenberg, informing them that the dining hall was closed and that they had to eat in Kirkland House. The fish incident further irritated students, he said.

Undergraduate Council President Matthew W. Mahan ’05—a Kirkland resident and Kalamchi’s roommate—said the Matherites blamed him for the disappearance of the gong.

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Denying any involvement in the theft, Mahan said the Mather Department of War was a “goofy crew” with “too much spare time on their hands,” but he commended their efforts “to make Harvard a more ideal conception of college.”

After another war-related incident—when Kafie said he caught Maats beating and destroying a shrub in the Kirkland courtyard—many thought that the war had lost direction.

In Adams House, residents said they did not devise a strategy to retrieve the gong because they did not know who had taken it.

“You can’t have a war if it’s not clear who your enemy is,” said Christopher A. Lamie ’04, former co-chair of the Adams House HoCo. “The House war in this sense was a total failure.”

Maats said he received a range of “bitter and angry” e-mails from students, even after Matherites returned the gong.

Yet Co-Master of Mather House Sandra Naddaff wrote in an e-mail that she looked on to the war in “bemusement.”

“The initiative is a wonderful feature of this year’s senior class, which gave something new to the House,” Naddaff wrote.

THE LEGACY OF WAR

Citing the example of several House games of assassin, many students felt that friendly competition between the Houses, which began to emerge during the war, should be a staple of undergraduate life.

“I feel like the House war would be a great thing if done right,” Lamie said. “It could be a lot of fun if each House knew what they were fighting against and could unite.”

Since the housing lottery was randomized in 1995, many have voiced the need for new traditions to reinforce each House’s unique identity.

“The war efforts show that we do need to find ways to revitalize House spirit,” Mahan said, adding that he is planning a competitive campus-wide event, “Harvard Olympics,” to be linked with Fallfest.

“Any sense of belonging to the larger community starts with spirit in the House,” Mahan said. “When you look back on your four Harvard years, you’ll remember most of all the fun you had. And inevitably a lot of that will be wound up in the place you lived.”

—Staff writer Elena P. Sorokin can be reached at sorokin@fas.harvard.edu.

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