Masters Consider Extended Parties

House masters are poised to allow room parties to continue until 2 a.m. during a trial period next semester.

The masters expressed optimism about extending the deadline at a Wednesday meeting, Council of Masters Chair and Co-Master of Mather House Sandra Naddaff said.

The masters will likely decide the issue on Feb. 6 and have asked a committee of students and senior tutors to ensure that concerns about security and noise are addressed before the next meeting.

The masters’ approval of later hours, Naddaff said, will likely be contingent on whether safety and noise issues are resolved.

Students seem to support later hours, and Naddaff said student opinion was an important factor in the masters’ decision.

“We’d like to see the students have the extended party hours that they want, since they have a particularly strong wish for this,” Naddaff said.

Former Undergraduate Council member Brian R. Smith ’02 found in a study that 90 percent of students support extending party hours and that 66 percent of students do not go to sleep until 3 a.m. on weekends.

“At one o’clock, students are not ready to go to bed. They will go out into the streets looking for something to do, or will go to bars,” council representative Allison I. Rogers ’04 said.

“With two o’clock party hours, students would feel as if they had a really satisfying night,” Rogers said. “They’ll be staying on campus and mostly in their own Houses, and most of the bars will be closed. It’s a safety issue, and the administrators agreed.”

Rogers serves on a seven-member committee including three House tutors, three students and Assistant to the Master of Quincy House Suzanne Watts. The committee will work to address the concerns of the masters and standardize the application form that all party hosts must complete.

The proposed form should be ready for review by House tutors on Feb. 5 and will then be submitted to the Council of Masters for approval.

“If a standardized form can be created by the deadline, then the House masters will almost certainly extend party hours,” incoming council President and committee member Matt W. Mahan ’05 said.

One goal of the new forms is to make applying for parties a less cumbersome process than it is now, with different forms for each House, Rogers said.

But a more significant goal is to address some of the masters’ concerns with extended party hours.

One of the crucial issues for Naddaff and the other masters is determining whether the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) and House security officials were prepared to protect students leaving parties at 2 a.m.

HUPD spokesperson Steven G. Catalano did not anticipate that the extended party hours would affect current police patrols.

“Most likely [2 a.m. party hours] would have no impact considering there are already detail officers at parties,” Catalano said.

The committee also plans to extend shuttle service to the Quad and increase the volume of shuttles so that students can return to their dorms safely.

The extended shuttle schedule would also ensure that students do not disturb Cambridge residents, another of the masters’ concerns.

The masters said they also expect the host to take greater responsibility towards ensuring that their parties do not disturb other students.

According to Rogers, the new form will ask party hosts to sign a “commitment signature” that would make them obligated to keep the party’s volume to a minimum so that House residents can sleep or study in peace. The form will also ask hosts of Quad parties to make reasonable assurances that departing guests will not disturb residents on Garden Street, which runs between Harvard Yard and the Quad.

“I imagine the trial period will play out successfully as long as not a lot of neighborhood noise is made, as long as there is no unusual commotion, disturbance, or rowdy behavior as students exit parties,” Naddaff said.

—Staff writer Elena P. Sorokin can be reached at sorokin@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Alan J. Tabak can be reached at tabak@fas.harvard.edu.

—Hana R. Alberts contributed to the reporting of this story.