For a few weekends this semester, Loker Commons shed its geeky trappings and stepped into something a little more hip.

Traditionally seen as a place to grab Fly-By meals or frantically compare answers to Chem 15 problem sets, the underused space in the basement of Memorial Hall took on a different character for six weekend evenings as the College administration, Harvard Student Agencies, and Veritas Records ran their hugely successful Pub Nights.

Lured by $1 draft beers and live music from professional and student bands, thousands of students flocked to Loker in the name of school-sponsored fun, and its popularity as a nightspot has prompted a College plan to spend millions of dollars to convert Loker into a pub permanently.

The Pub Nights were one piece of a concerted administrative effort over the past several years to address on-campus social life, which has long been criticized by students as deficient.

Few students were surprised when, in late March, the Boston Globe reported results from the 2002 senior surveys showing that the graduating class was highly dissatisfied with social life at Harvard.

According to the survey, Harvard averaged a 2.62 for its campus social life, compared to an average rating of 2.89 at other schools, and netted a 2.53 for its sense of community, compared to 2.8 at other schools, the Globe reported.

The data added fuel to the long-held belief that students at Harvard have less fun than their peers, even those at similarly rigorous schools like Yale.

In part to address the evidence underlying this stereotype, the administration has taken on a role this year which it has largely ignored in the past—actively attempting to improve student social life, mainly by planning and funding large-scale, campus-wide events like concerts, festivals, and Pub Nights.

But even when these events are successful, students say they often don’t address the more basic need for casual socializing among undergraduates.

While large scale events sprinkled throughout the social calendar have added more options, the small parties that form the bread and butter of Harvard social life are still hindered by myriad restrictions.

And the middle ground, social staples at other schools like open fraternity parties or dive bars, is largely absent at Harvard.

Students cite the lack of well-established social options—and the highly fractured social scene that comes out of this deficiency—as responsible for student dissatisfaction and the long-held presumption that Harvard undergraduates here have less fun than their peers.

ADMINISTRATING FUN

The College has recently seen nearly unprecedented efforts on the part of the administration to jumpstart and facilitate social life on campus.

“That’s exactly what we’ve been focusing on for the past three years,” Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 wrote in an e-mail in March, referring to the low marks the Class of 2002 had given to campus social life in the survey.