HERE'S LOOKIN' AT YOU KID!

Every night, scores of Harvard students look up from their unmarked and neglected Ec 10 source-books into the deceptively silent darkness, wondering what the rest of the world is up to. Gazing into neighboring windows, we wonder what could be going on behind the closed curtains. The quiet world of Harvard's "watchers in the night" is a lot more widespread than one might guess.

Anthropological allure

"It didn't start until this year, when I got quadded," says one resident of Currier house, preferring to remain anonymous so as not to blow her cover. "I'd be taking a study break or something and go up to the balcony [of Currier towers] and just look at the stars and airplanes-- but then I realized that you can look straight into people's windows. People just don't even think about it." Perhaps active nightlife is rare, ("Come on, it is the Quad after all," says the Currier spy) but there's almost always something to see. "I get really interested in just watching people sit at their desks," she comments. "The occasional nose-picker, you know. And then there're also the people who wander around their rooms, when they think they're studying. There's a whole lot of action that you can't really explain--and everything looks different when you're only seeing part of the room and the action. Everyone looks different." For example, at an angle from above, bald spots are much more visible and can be easily exposed. For the "Currier Spectator," her experience, as a casual observer of private lives has been a shaping force in her daily interaction with dormmates. "I'll run into people in the dining hall and want to be, like, 'why did you spend 10 minutes last night staring at the back of your roommate's head?' Or, 'I saw you smoking in your room, bad boy.' But I try not to make faces or giggle."

The spectator is quick to add that she's quite strict about exactly what situations are observable, and which must be left unseen. "Some things are absolutely intriguing--for example, watching people put on make-up or admire themselves in the mirror. But I don't want to watch people making out." Of course, this isn't a particularly frequent occupational hazard, but even at Harvard, people do hook up, (all too often right in front of their windows.) "Exposed flesh is just out. I'm not a pervert. It's more like an anthropological study." She mentions that she may try to integrate this into an upcoming photo project ("because people are so much better when they're not posing for you") though she's not sure about the legal implications for displaying such unauthorized and intimate portraits.

A Nude Study

The Harvard first-year living away from home for the first time finally got the opportunity to spend his days and nights exactly as he chooses. What to do?

"I'll admit that I spend a lot of my time thinking about naked people," says one Harvard Yardling. "That's just what fascinates me. So this year, I've found that the best way to procrastinate is to watch people going around their room naked."

She explains that the prime time for viewing is usually around midnight, when people are going to sleep. "That's just the one time when everyone has to get naked, and when I'm sitting at my desk looking out the window. It's so much more interesting to see someone walk perfectly unashamed across their common room and check their e-mail in the nude than to check your own e-mail."

How does she get any work done? "Well, eventually people are mostly all asleep--there are a few that stay up, but it's less of a prime-time atmosphere. Also, it's really interesting, but it's not, like, really amazing. If there were a ton of hotties in Matthews, I might get more obsessed with it. But really, it's no swooning-and-passing-out-over-your-homework material. Just neat to watch. It sort of makes my skin crawl." Ours too.

Goodnight sweetheart

"Living above the entrance to Kirkland is good, because arrivals and departures tell a lot about what is going on with people in the dorm," says Katie J. Wink '00. "You see who's getting in a car with someone else. You see who's coming to visit more often. You see if someone fixes their hair before they go into the courtyard and might be seen."

Wink professes to be a "closet gossip-monger" when it comes to the activities of her dormmates. "The best is when you catch someone on a quasi-walk-of-shame. When it's still dark out, but you can just tell that they are all flushed and touseled from, you know, hooking up."

Listening at keyholes

An often neglected side of Harvard's world of undercover observation is non-visual apprehension: what we don't see may be the most interesting action. Literally, that is. Harvard's architects seem to have had a special bias towards the connecting fire door; great for fires, but also an amazing audio window into the lives of neighbors.

"I'm the farthest thing in the world from a peeping tom," says one junior in Quincy House, "but you can't help hearing things." Living on the third floor of New Quincy, she and her roommates have a unique perspective on the "goings-on" of the tutor suite next door: "My room-mates and I hear [goings-on] every morning at 9 a.m...repeated moaning through the bathroom fire door like clockwork. People in Greenwich could set clocks by this."

It is by no means an isolated phenomenon--nearly everyone has a fire door at some point in their Harvard career; nearly everyone has heard someone having intimate relations through a fire door. "It's sort of striking, though," says the Quincy resident. "I mean, the regularity. I don't think any students could be that dependable."

Others have considered the flip side of this phenomenon, including one Adams House resident. "I don't know who lives on the other side of our fire door, but I can't imagine what they must think of us." He describes the conversations which go on in his room as "just basically, surprisingly crude. In class, I think that people see me as a polite, serious guy. Around my roommates, I deteriorate." He speculates that "whoever it is [on the other side of that door,] they see a side of me that the rest of the world does not. My roommates do, but that's it."

Does he ever think about censoring his exchanges? "Actually, I didn't even realize that you could hear through the door until pretty recently, when we heard them. My roommates thought everyone knew. But I didn't, and that's that. So I don't worry--I figure they'll either hate us by now, or not care at all. I'm just never going to go knocking and find out exactly who it is."

Is someone watching you? The heartwarming story

On facing sides of Holworthy and Canaday, a unique connection was established. "I wasn't even spying on them, just one day, I was sort of looking out, and [someone in the Canaday fourth floor] caught my eye, looking back. I was like, 'Wow, it's pretty weird that we live right across from each other," explains Liz L. Sarles '01. The two watchers discovered, through subsequent and conversations at Annenberg, that they knew each other through mutual friends. "We didn't know each other that well, but it was just sort of something we'd talk about." agrees the guy behind the window, Terence S. Carter '01. He says, "No, we're not dating or anything--we're just good friends." Carter explains that it's just sort of a ritual or game between the two rooms, to check out what's going on across the way. "We're close, so it doesn't matter [what they see]."

And what's this supposed to mean (wink, wink).

"She's kind of a wild one--the window looks out into their common room, so sometimes I'll see her doing some wild stuff. You know." Terence declines to get more specific about just what "wild" means:

And what does she see? "Well, I don't really watch when they're getting undressed or anything." C'mon, really? "Well, at least never when they're actually naked." Oh yeah? "Well, at least not on purpose," says Liz. "Actually, sometimes we'll look over and wonder, why the curtain is closed. What's going on in there now?"

With such an open exchange, the two rooms do consciously reserve some privacy. While maybe there's no striptease--just good wholesome hijinks--Terence con-cedes that "there is definitely some purposeful nudity."

Terence is also quick to point out that their lighthearted diversions are really nothing compared to what goes on elsewhere in the Yard. Things are easier so see, because windows are at pedestrian level, and the dorms are very close together. Terence mentions a neighbor who has a room facing Thayer and who swears that "there's this one couple who completely show off." He agrees, too, that there are some things that you just don't watch. "We were talking about this [particular room across the way], and we looked out the window, and in a room right next to that one we saw this girl just totally getting undressed, who we didn't even know. Really, that was the time to just pull down the shade."

After all, everyone has their limits.