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In the spring of 2004, Kirkland House residents opened their doors to the smell of dead fish. An ill-fated HUDS meal? No — an act of war. During the second of three inter-house wars from 1999 to 2012, Matherites attacked their enemies in Kirkland by placing 250 dead goldfish in their door boxes.
What force on Earth could compel someone to act so aggressively? To anyone not living in Kirkland, the answer was simple: House loyalty. During at least three separate points in the history of Harvard College, one line from the classic Harvard introduction could mean the difference between peace and war.
The first war commenced in 1999, when Adams enforced their already-stringent interhouse dining restrictions by placing white stickers on their students’ HUIDs. Offended by their exclusion, the Pforzheimer House Committee attempted a vote to ban Adams residents from entering their dining hall. The vote failed, but was enough to provoke a declaration of war from Adams. A series of pranks ensued.
“We locked their gates with bike locks, which I’m sure now is probably a fire code violation,” Manuel A. Garcia ’00, then the Pfoho House Committee President, recalls. Pfoho residents also stole a gong from the Adams dining hall, and the war raged on. Pfoho residents told freshmen that Annenberg was closed, sending a rush of them into the Adams dining hall for brunch. Adams residents posted signs of war and began calling themselves “Pfadams.”
These shenanigans sometimes had consequences, though, Garcia remembers. One of the dining hall workers was injured.
Despite the pranks, there was “no animosity” between Pfoho and Adams residents, Garcia says. The week-long war eventually culminated in a tournament of three athletic events — a football game, a tug-of-war match, and a drag race. Pfoho emerged victorious.
At the time, the war carried an additional meaning for residents of the house.
Garcia was part of the second Harvard class to enter the housing system through the randomized lottery process, a 1999 reform aimed at promoting fairness. Before randomization, students could rank their House preferences, perpetuating house-specific reputations. For instance, Eliot was the preppy house, Garcia recalls, and Adams was the artsy one.
But with the randomized system, this sense of shared identity was fading. The war provided a unique opportunity to counteract the decay. “I think it definitely brought people closer,” Garcia says.
After the House War of 1999, all remained peaceful until 2004, when a former Mather resident detailed his reasons for transferring to Kirkland on the House mailing list, following a larger trend of students moving out of Mather.
“It got to the point where there [were] only two or three senior blocking groups in Mather,” Daniel E. Kafie ’05 told The Crimson at the time.
Mather HoCo chair Hunter A. Maats ’04 was “appalled” by the “tasteless” email, and warfare ensued. Soon, Mather demanded that Kirkland residents return the Adams gong, Kirkland residents found goldfish lying dead outside their doors, and Cabot had allied with Mather. Dunster joined the fray as well, stealing Eliot House’s banner. Unlike in 1999, this war was largely one-sided and faded out.
Just eight years later in 2012, tensions flared again with the ever-belligerent Adams when the voting system for Adams’s new mascot was declassified. Currier residents flooded the form with invalid votes for the acorn option, suggesting that acorns would grow into the “Currier tree.”
Antone Martinho-Truswell ’13, the former Adams Hoco co-chair of special projects, recalls of the previous wars: “It was fresh in institutional memory that this was a thing that could happen, but no one present had ever experienced it. So we thought, well, you know, why not?” So once again, they charged into battle.
The war of 2012, in a departure from years past, was predominantly based in propaganda and a complex system of alliances.
Adams banned the residents of Currier House from eating in their dining hall. Pfoho House, the undisputed victor in the previous war against Adams, was the first to take sides, backing a fellow member of the quad squad in the way only those who are trauma bonded do.
Pfoho issued its modern twist on the Monroe Doctrine — called the “Mario Doctrine” after its building manager — asserting allegiance to Currier and a willingness to retaliate should Adams strike against Currier. What followed was a veritable avalanche of support for Currier in the form of additional alliances with Cabot and Mather, forming what they called the Axis of Evil Lottery Results.
Adams did have a friend in the midst of this dark chapter — a half-hearted but well-intentioned Winthrop House. Unfortunately, Winthrop proved to be an unstable ally as it attempted to declare war on a neutral Lowell House, then prematurely withdrew from the war altogether.
The only actual act of hostility that Martinho-Truswell recalls was the Axis of Evil attempting to invade the Adams dining hall. “We got wind of this beforehand, so before they came, we decorated the dining hall as a House transfer information session,” he recalls with a hint of satisfaction. Needless to say, the Currierites were humbled upon arrival. From there, the war fizzled out.
Now a dean at St. Paul’s College in Australia, Martinho-Truswell credits the War of 2012 and life at Adams in general for pointing him towards a career of building community among university students. “My experience at Adams was sufficiently strong in House culture that it’s inspired a career working in residential colleges,” he says.
It’s been 10 years of peace. Pfohosers and Cronkhidors dine peacefully at Adams House each day. Kirkland and Mather have graciously agreed to tie for worst River House. Adams did finally settle on the acorn as their mascot.
But have we known peace for too long? Could a war boost modern House morale?
“I haven’t seen anything like this lately,” says Mario E. Leon — the namesake of the Mario Doctrine and the Pfoho building manager to this day — noting a change in students’ affiliation for their House over the past few years. “I think the pandemic didn’t help, having two years without the community build-up.”
Maybe a new war is just what some houses need. “I’m sure now it would probably be looked down upon to be launching a war on a house,” Garcia says, “but I think it was a great House spirit event.”
—Magazine writer Jem K. Williams can be reached at jem.williams@thecrimson.com.
—Magazine writer Kyle L. Mandell can be reached at kyle.mandell@thecrimson.com.
