Open Season on Senior Bars

The information is supposed to be kept secret, but shortly after dinner on any given April evening everyone knows where the senior bar is.

Every night this month, a group of brave seniors are opening up their rooms and liquor cabinets to the Class of 1986 as part of a round of senior activities leading up to commencement.

The location of the bar, which changes from house to house every night, is not advertised, and theoretically the party is for seniors. But that doesn't keep freshmen, sophomores and juniors away.

"There's really no resentment, since the seniors are in a mood to party," says Henry P. Biggs '86, one of the eight class marshalls this year who organize the bars.

"I'm sitting in a completely trashed room right now," reports Preston W. Brooks '86, who held a senior bar in Eliot House on Thursday night. He and his roommates had three kegs of beer, all emptied, and $60 of vodka. "It was fun," he says.

The first bar of the spring season was at Currier House last Tuesday night. Students who hold the senior bars undergo "a huge expenditure, and a sacrifice of their rooms because of the damage incurred by the parties," Biggs says.

All the seniors hosting the bars pay for the booze themselves, while the marshalls organize. According to College rules, seniors are not allowed to advertise the class-wide bars on campus, says First Marshall Anne C. Bailey '86.

Several class marshalls say they try to maintain the Harvard drinking policy at the bars, and for the first time this spring, the College is issuing stickers for seniors' school ID cards, so that they can be checked for legal age when they are carded at parties, Biggs says.