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Last weekend’s Head of the Charles Regatta brought tens of thousands of spectators to Cambridge with tents, concession stands, games, and countless other activities lining the banks of the Charles. While nowhere near New Orleans’ Mardi Gras celebrations, the weekend marked one of the few times a year when Cambridge is truly in a festive mood.

One might assume Harvard would join in, encouraging its students to partake in the revelry. One would be wrong. Reality is quite the opposite: Harvard administrators took the proactive step of banning student groups from throwing any social events at night during the duration of the weekend.

While unfortunate, this is no surprise. Although I have bemoaned Harvard students’ seeming inability to behave like normal college students, administrators themselves contribute to this issue just as much, if not more than, students. Time and time again, the Harvard administration has shown nothing scares it more than its students having fun of their own design.

Take the annual Harvard-Yale weekend as an example. Three years ago, administrators arrogated to themselves complete authority over how students were allowed to tailgate before the game, with predictable results. Students, less than enthused about attending a party organized by a bunch of bureaucrats with constant administrative oversight, chose to set up an alternative — and much more widely attended — tailgate.

How did administrators respond? They attempted to shut it down, forcing it to migrate across the river to the MAC lawn.

Last year’s rendition of The Game went much more smoothly, despite constant saber rattling emanating from the Dean of Students Office. After referring to federal law, making thinly veiled threats at arrest, and fundamentally misunderstanding the minds of college students, Harvard administrators graciously and magnanimously chose not to prosecute its students, allowing the student-led and student-preferred tailgate to go largely uninterrupted.

Or consider Yardfest, the College’s premier spring concert in which it invites a famous artist to perform in the Yard for the student body. Instead of hosting it on a Friday or Saturday night, which would allow students a day or two to rest and recover before jumping into next week’s classes, the administration inexplicably schedules it for a Sunday afternoon.

Although I am unable to divine the intentions of the intellectual titans that are Harvard administrators, it is hard to escape the conclusion that this is a strategic decision aimed at minimizing the amount of fun students want to have, knowing that they might have to wake up for a 9:00 a.m. class the next morning. How thoughtful of them.

Harvard administrators would rather regulate any semblance of student fun entirely out of existence than allow us to just be college students. It should come as no surprise, then, when students seeking a good time flock to unregulated off-campus events, including final clubs.

Recently, moreover, the College seems to have begun more intensely regulating those student organizations that fall underneath its auspices, ferreting out any semblance of student enjoyment. The first victim? The Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra — hardly a rambunctious crowd, one would imagine — slapped with a semester-long suspension for alleged hazing.

The hazing in question? Quizzing students about the names of upperclassmen in the orchestra, blindfolding them, walking them up and down a hill, and then offering them either a shot of water or vodka.

To be clear, hazing that harms students is unequivocally wrong, and should be punished accordingly; complying with federal law regarding hazing is similarly non-negotiable.

But was this really hazing? According to the text of the anti-hazing rules, maybe. According to an objective observer with common sense, likely not.

Even if the College felt that it was bound by its rules and forced to issue some sort of punishment, suspending one of the world’s leading collegiate orchestras is clearly many steps too far for a physically harmless incident. By adopting the broadest possible interpretation of what constitutes hazing as well as incredibly harsh penalties for minor (at best) transgressions, Harvard administrators have effectively chilled any activity that few — if any — rational people would consider hazing, but most would consider fun.

At the end of the day, Harvard administrators should take a step back and realize who they are dealing with: Harvard students. We are among the best and brightest of our generation. Many of us have probably never broken a rule in our life. And, frankly, the type of fun that we are begging the College to grant us is, in the grand scheme of things, incredibly tame.

Please, let us have fun.

Henry P. Moss IV ’26, an Associate Editorial editor, is a History concentrator in Eliot House.