First-Years Brace for Visits From Home

The vacuums are coming out of the closet, the laundry is finally getting washed and first-year students are eagerly awaiting a nice meal out in the Square this weekend as hordes of parents arrive for the annual Freshman Parents’ Weekend today and tomorrow.

The weekend will offer parents a chance to eat in the dining halls and attend classes. They’ll get complimentary admission to Harvard museums and listen to speeches from freshmen deans.

They’ll even get to hear University President Lawrence H. Summers. That marks a departure from the last president—Neil L. Rudenstine spoke at only one parents’ weekend during his decade-long tenure.

“President Larry Summers has just spoken with [the first year parents] in early September so it’s very nice that he wants to officially meet them again,” said Julia G. Fox, director of the Harvard Parents’ Association.

This year, with the football team playing an away game—which happens every second year—the emphasis for the weekend will be on the arts, according to Fox.

“We have athletics one year and in the alternate year we focus on thing like arts...next year it’ll be back to the [home] football game,” she said.

Thus likely the biggest beneficiary of a proud parents’ audience this weekend will be the Freshmen Theater Program’s production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, which opened last night and will run through tomorrow night.

About 1,200 parents are expected to visit and attend events including morning performances tomorrow by improv comedy group On Thin Ice (OTI) and the Harvard-Radcliffee Collegium Musicum.

Collegium member Elaine F. Besancon ’06 said her parents are “very excited to get to be here.”

First-year OTI member John P. Blickstead ’06 said he’s happy to get the chance to perform in front of his parents.

“We usually try to run a fairly PG-13 show,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to it.”

But the emphasis on the arts this year comes at a price for the parents of football players and band members whose children will be at Princeton tomorrow for this weekend’s game.

“My parents are coming down to the Princeton game,” said Julia E. Cassis ’06, a member of the Harvard University Band. “I would rather that they see me perform in the band than hang around Harvard.”

Even some band members say they can see a silver lining to the scheduling clash.

“Fortunately, my parents aren’t coming up,” said band member Joshua H. Rissmiller ’06. “Otherwise I’d be frantically cleaning my room.”