Undergraduates and deans alike demonstrated their athletic prowess this year in two campus-wide dodgeball tournament, students flocked in droves to the first-ever Harvard Pub Nights, and the Undergraduate Council (UC) organized Springfest: The Afterparty, an event specifically geared towards undergraduates—complete with beer and professional bands.

This year, after Special Assistant to the Dean for Social Programming Zachary A Corker ’04 assumed a new position created to increase students’ social options on campus, Harvard undergraduates have seen a greater share of purely fun events.

And after a March Boston Globe article broadcasted the long-held stereotype that Harvard undergraduates are less happy than their peers at other elite schools, the number of expanded social options on campus has never been more timely.

An internal October 2004 Harvard memo analyzing data from the 2002 survey found that Harvard averaged a 2.62 on a 5-point scale rating its campus social life, compared to an average of 2.89 across 30 other schools, the Globe reported.

Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 told the Crimson in March that the issues of social life raised by the data guided his priorities when he first took his post in July 2003.

“That’s exactly what we’ve been focusing on for the past three years,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Gross noted that administrators have stepped up their efforts to expand student activity space and extend party hours to 2 a.m. And the College has demonstrated that improving social life is one of its top priorities with its consideration of plans to turn Loker Commons into a permanent pub in the wake of six successful Pub Nights.

LIVIN’ LA VIDA LOKER

Administrators credit Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby with backing programming that would reinvigorate Loker Commons.

“Dean Kirby supported the original idea,” Corker says. “When I met with Dean Kidd, she asked me what we could do to make Loker Commons a pub.”

Corker adds that the concept was a “truly collaborative effort.”

Working in conjunction with Veritas Records and Harvard Student Agencies (HSA), the Office of Student Activities (OSA) helped make Pub Nights a reality. And since Loker Commons made its pub debut in early February, students have consistently filtered into the little-used study space.

Renovated in 1996 with a $7 million donation from philanthropist Katherine B. Loker, the basement space has since struggled to shed its reputation as a study space for students seeking to double-check problem sets and as a place to grab food on the fly.

Swapping books and bagels for music and beer, 988 undergraduates—nearly one-sixth of the student body—helped transform the basement space into a more enticing social option on the first Pub Night.

Past attempts to host social events in the bowels of Memorial Hall have not generated a strong turnout.