As part of our Housing Market series, we'll be posting reviews and rankings for each of Harvard's 12 residential Houses over the next few days. Click here to read more about our project.
The House of the Hare can be described as “Good, thank you very much.” Leverett is a solid House with many benefits to be had, and freshmen should feel a small jolt of excitement and breathe a hefty sigh of relief at getting sorted into this above average House.
Dining Hall: The dining hall staff is wonderfully amicable. The food stations are intuitively arranged, the drink machines are outside the kitchen for easy access, and there is always a bounty of cereal. The dim lighting may keep our dining hall from sparkling, but it gets the job done and you’ll often finding yourself spending many comfortable hours lounging. The hall is sometimes packed during dinner, in large part because of the dining restrictions of Adams and Quincy, but you usually won’t have a problem finding seating for you and your posse.
Score: +50 for a great design, -10 for being sometimes packed
Common Spaces: Lacking. The Junior Common Room is a bit of a fail. You can go there to watch TV, but the environment is not exactly a cozy one, with awkward open spaces and not enough couches to go around during social events. The Old Library is more of a space for meetings than hanging out, and the Towers do have the “G-Spot,” which despite its sexy name is a fairly tame common space. Unlike Quincy or the Quad Houses, there are few game rooms or facilities for fun activities.
However, there is a conveniently placed library between the Leverett Towers and McKinlock—the main building of Leverett. It has comfortable seating and tables for your studying pleasure and is open at all hours. There is also a computer lab below the library that stocks both Macs and PCs.
If you need to GTL, there is a decent gym in A-entryway that you can buy a key to for a reasonable price. There are also laundry rooms in all three housing locations.
Score: +50 for the library, -200 for everything else