City Lets ‘Lather’ Off the Hook

After police shut down the overcrowded “Mather Lather” foam party in April, students and administrators thought Cambridge might clamp down on future parties.

But at a Cambridge License Commission hearing Tuesday, the city decided not to punish Mather House for the party and signaled that parties would likely keep a 2 a.m. curfew next fall.

Undergraduate Council president Rohit Chopra ’04, who attended the meeting, said he is “confident” that the city will not return permanently to a strict 1 a.m. party curfew—a possibility that many feared after the “Lather” attracted a crowd of drunken revelers that city officials say exceeded the party space’s capacity.

Zachary A Corker ’04, a co-chair of the Mather House Committee who also attended the meeting, said “the city wants to work with us.”

At the hearing, Associate Dean of the College David P. Illingworth ’71 told city officials that the College would form a committee to review its rules for holding a party.

Students and administrators agreed that the current rules are too confusing and discouraging to House committees, a situation which helped lead to the overcrowding at the “Lather.”

Calling the current restrictions “out-of-date,” Chopra said that the committee will try to pare down the rules and make it easier for students to host safer, larger events.

“It’s amazing to me that Harvard can create a complete bureaucracy around having a party,” said Chopra.

He said that the committee will not plan parties themselves, but reevaluate the procedures that are currently in place.

Though the idea of changing rules about large parties has been mentioned often by Council members even before the Lather debacle, Chopra said that the licensing commission hearing gave the College reason to act.

“There needs to be a lot more of the large events,” Chopra said. “We need to create a way that works for the city and the students.”

Since the committee has not yet met, no specific changes in party policies have been discussed.

Corker, however, said that he hopes the committee will consider appointing a College administrator whose job will be to oversee the planning of social events.

Illingworth noted in an e-mail to The Crimson that the committee will “particularly” examine “events which need licensing from the City.”

Dean of Undergraduate Education Benedict H. Gross ’71 will chair the task force, which will start meeting next month, according to Chopra.

At the hearing, Illingworth said he felt that the problems that surfaced at “Mather Lather” were serious.

“This is going to cause us to rethink all of the party situations we had,” he said, adding that the College would have to monitor the number of people admitted to parties more carefully.

“One of the things we learned from this is we need to pay more attention to ticketing these parties,” Mather House co-master Sandra Nadaff said at the hearing. “Ticketing is something that we don’t do very well and we need to do better.”

Corker said that the College has invited members of the licensing commission to sit on the committee. The commission has not yet responded to the invitation.

—Stephen M. Marks contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Alexandra N. Atiya can be reached at atiya@fas.harvard.edu.