Summers Hippity-Hops at ’Berg Break

Whoa, Nelly. Larry Summers has moves and he’s not afraid to use them.

Harvard’s president stunned a crowd of 300 first-years at an Annenberg Hall study break Monday night when he got down to “Hot in Herre.”

Though Summers did not follow Nelly’s advice in the song to “take off all your clothes,” the Yard was abuzz with speculation about the president’s conduct on the dance floor.

After half an hour of mingling with the first-years, Summers made a short speech welcoming students back from winter break. Then, at about 10 p.m., the lights dimmed, and Summers, surrounded by a cheering crowd, started dancing to the opening chords of the hip-hop smash hit.

In an interview yesterday, the president was quick to clarify that he was an equal-opportunity dancer.

“Let me be very clear. There was no individual student with whom I danced for more than 15 seconds,” he said. “I danced with groups of students several times.”

A camera crew from the CBS television news program “60 Minutes” followed Summers around while he talked and signed dollar bills, attracting a crowd of students in search of their own few moments of network-TV stardom.

But the show’s crew, which came to Cambridge to do a story on Summers and Harvard, left before Summers took to the dance floor.

“I was surprised,” said Aaron E. Tjoa ’06. “You see him giving speeches, but you don’t think he’d do that kind of thing.”

Summers said that while he was a little reluctant to dance, he felt obliged after learning that 30 bucks were riding on his decision.

Nichele M. McClendon ’06 took her prefect up on a bet that Summers would dance with her and, on camera, approached the president as he made his rounds. She said that after jokingly asking for a $5 cut of her winnings, he agreed to dance—but once the music started she couldn’t get through the thick crowd surrounding the bobbing president.

Though she didn’t get her 15 seconds of fame, and thus her $30, she said she was nonetheless impressed by his moves.

“I was very surprised—I thought he was going to gracefully duck out of the scene,” she said. “He was definitely getting down.”

“The lights went off, and then ‘Hot in Herre’ came on, and then I guess he started freaking girls, or whatever,” Tjoa said, laughing.

Summers—whose alleged disapproval of the “danceable education” CD recorded by former Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74 was the subject of much controversy last year—has no plans to pursue a lucrative career making music videos.

“I daresay [the first-years] were not very impressed with the quality of my dancing, but that’s for others to judge,” he said. “Like somebody said about my tennis, it was a triumph of purpose over inability.”

One first-year said she heard that Summers “took off his tie and started swinging it above his head like a helicopter”—a rumor of dubious origin since Summers wasn’t even wearing a tie.

He dressed casually for the occasion, wearing a sweater and slacks while mingling with students seated at spruced-up tables in the Annenberg dining hall complete with tablecloths and bowls of candy.

Summers has made a point of holding question-and-answer sessions at all the upperclass Houses during his first two years as president, but these study breaks are strictly pizza-and-soda affairs.

The Annenberg party, on the other hand, was complete with gourmet desserts, a nacho bar and DJ BC—also known as Bob Cronin, the Freshman Dean’s Office administrator.

“I was very surprised. Larry Summers puts on a pretty good party,” McClendon said. “The food was fabulous.”

Summers said that the party was intended to give students a break during reading period and that he thought most first-years enjoyed it.

McClendon said that the media presence, and Summers’ studious efforts to work the crowd, made the party seem slightly “canned,” although she still had a good time.

“Any time the president shows up it’s a publicity stunt, but he was there with us, he was talking to kids, and on the floor dancing,” added Chelsea S. Simmons ’06. “I think it does say something for Harvard that he gets such a big turnout by saying the president’s coming.”

But though it was Hot in Herre in Annenberg, it was cold outside last night, and a more typical crowd of about 30 students came to Summers’ more traditional study break at Mather House, where the president was relatively stationary as he answered students’ questions.

CBS was nowhere to be found.

—Staff writer Rebecca D. O’Brien can be reached at robrien@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached at theodore@fas.harvard.edu.