“It shouldn’t be that something totally random carries so much weight,” says former Undergraduate Council President Tara Raghuveer ’14, referring to the centrality of House life at the College.
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“But saying the two things at once, one, this is totally random, and, two, this is supposed to be your everything, you’re really setting yourself up for failure, setting people up for expectations you can’t possibly meet,” she continues.
Administrators agree that Houses are structurally different, but contend that the positive and negative aspects of each House balance each other out.
“Almost every House has something that makes it less attractive,” says Dean of Freshmen Thomas A. Dingman ’67.
Co-Master of Eliot House Gail A. O’ Keefe says that staff, tutors, and masters work hard to “smooth out the rough edges” created by physical differences through establishing a vibrant and unique social community in each of the Houses.
For some students, though, the presence of such communities is not enough to assuage what they see as vast differences in experience brought about by the housing lottery.
Raghuveer, who used to live in Currier but moved off campus with her blockmates for her senior year, says that she thinks that balance is often unachievable given differences in student preferences.
“The singles in the Quad doesn’t make the distance okay, and the short distance in the River doesn’t make the rooming situation okay,” says Raghuveer. “Those things aren’t equal, necessarily.”
Claire R. Leibowicz ’16, who is hoping to transfer with her blockmate from Pforzheimer House for the upcoming school year, says that while she loves the House community, the distance made her experience at the College very different from that of her friends who live along the River.
“There’s no worse feeling than standing in the dead of the winter at Widener gate with a million things to do and you don’t even know when the next shuttle is going to come,” Leibowicz says. “It just kind of feels like you’re living your life on someone else’s schedule. And there’s nothing worse than when you’re at a friend’s room…and it’s like, ‘do I leave in two minutes or do I leave in 41 minutes?’”
STRIVING FOR EQUALITY
University administrators hold that the current renewal effort will bridge significant variation between the Houses.
The 2009 Report on Harvard House Renewal outlined the project’s goal of offering similar basic amenities across the system, while maintaining each House’s unique physical profile.
Among its recommendations for the project, the report calls for all Houses to feature “key activity spaces,” like a library and TV room, as well as “at least one unique specialty space,” such as a wood shop or printing press.
