Signs for Mather Dance Ignite House Controversy

When the Mather House Committee decided to publicize their house “Decadenza” party with signs emblazoned “Freshman Girls Free,” they hardly expected to ignite a fierce house debate.

But several Matherites energetically condemned the HoCo’s plan to waive fees for one group, arguing that it encouraged the objectification of first-year women, while others contended that the dance and its publicity was all in good fun.

Both sides enthusiastically took to their computers, and Mather house residents woke up yesterday to more than 50 open list e-mails debating the implications of letting first-year women into the party—billed as a throwback to the “wildest orgies” of the Roman empire—for free.

Celeste B. Fine ’02 kicked off the debate by quoting from part of the poster on the house open list.

She said she took issue with both the wording and the implication of the special pricing.

“They’re just using these freshman girls to get people to come, and in that sense they’re objectifying them,” Fine told the Crimson.

Angie Sun ’03, HoCo co-chair who saw the posters before they went up, said in a Crimson interview that she regretted the marketing strategy.

“In retrospect we realize it wasn’t a wise decision,” Sun said. But Sun, citing the fact that the dance is only a few days away and that the HoCo has limited resources, said there are no plans to revise the dance’s pricing scheme. In fact, Sun said, the HoCo has financial difficulties and was simply hoping to attract first-years by waiving the fee for women.

Sun said that the wording of the poster—“Freshman Girls Free”—was unintentional.

“When we were discussing it around the table with five people, we were saying, we should make freshman girls free,” Sun said. “Our intention honestly wasn’t to single anybody out.”

But some who posted to the open-list thought that the selection of first-year women for cost-free admission constituted a “fetishization” or “prostitution” of the college’s youngest women.

Andrea Neuhaus-Follini ’04 argued that the marketing choice was exploitative of first-year women, who she said are more vulnerable than older women.

“If you look at studies of when rape happens at college, the vast majority of women who are raped are raped their freshman year,” Neuhaus-Follini said in an interview with The Crimson.

Bryan Choi ’03, who joined the open list specifically in order to jump in on the debate, disagreed that the intent and the implication of the pricing decision objectified first-year women.

“It’s a marketing ploy, but it was designed to get both genders to come,” he said. “It wasn’t designed, as some said, to bait freshman girls into entering a ‘predatory lair’. I sincerely believe people at Harvard are more intelligent than to believe that.”

—Staff writer Lauren R. Dorgan can be reached at dorgan@fas.harvard.edu.