All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go

On a cold weekend in February, Ilisia Shuke ’07 was jumping out of her high heels with excitement. A friend was coming into town, and Shuke planned to show her a good time in the city.

“The music was pumping in our room while we got dressed. I’m talking stilettos, lipstick and hot tank tops,” she reminisces. Everything was ready to go.

Everything except the Matrix bouncer, who turned the decked-out duo away at the door.

“It was like out of a movie,” Shuke says. “The two of us walked down the line to head back to Cambridge, and everyone just stared.”

Unfortunately, Shuke’s friend was getting a fairly typical glimpse of Harvard social life.

The Harvard scene is so widely disparaged as “blah” that even University administrators know about it. According to Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd, surveys of outgoing seniors consistently complain about social life. “We know we have a problem,” she says. “It’s just the exact way to solve it that we haven’t figured out yet.”

The cult of complainers has been brooding for a while. In 1999, Kirstin A. Bevington ’01 told The Crimson that Harvard parties were just “un-fun.”

“It’s disappointing,” she said, “and I look for other things to do. I don’t find that there’s a lot to do on campus.”

In 1985, a student writing under the pseudonym Chris Farley grumbled that the only signs of life on a typical Harvard weekend were a “Centrex phone” that led the average 80s party-searcher to a House party, only to find “five strangers desperately trying to have fun on tomato juice and Perrier.”

But students have done more than just complain. For as long as they’ve been bemoaning their weak social lives, Harvard students have been proposing solutions. In a 1988 Crimson piece, Mitchell A. Orenstein ’89 suggested the Undergraduate Council (UC) buy out financially struggling final clubs.

In 1989, Neil A. Cooper ’91 proposed building a student group whose mission was to improve social life.

In the last few years, the schemes, plans and recommendations have grown. The Greek scene is on the rise, and some have pointed to the new crop of fraternities and sororities as keys to reviving social life. Several websites virtually network students with hopes of connecting them in real life as much as online. Parties held at downtown clubs offer opportunities to outsource socialites into Boston. And this year, the UC offered money as an incentive for students to throw parties.

But the spurts of creativity haven’t produced substantial change. Only one Greek club owns property, and it has yet to throw a party. Hahvahdparties.com, even with its newly-acquired drawl, has not accomplished what it set out to do: many parties advertised on its website are independently well-publicized. Though downtown club parties have been popular, the trek to Boston can be a nuisance. And while Mahan says more room parties have been thrown since the UC kicked off its party fund this November, not all these parties have succeeded.

Despite all the efforts at resuscitation, complaints haven’t disappeared. Some say that’s because Harvard students care more about their transcripts than their tequila. But the underlying menace is not that students don’t want to party. It’s that they don’t have to anywhere do it.

But the propertyless Harvard social scene need not hang its unhappy head and cry just yet. Something unheard of is happening. For a long time students pleaded. But now, for the first time, administrators with the deep pockets that can make change happen are paying more attention, or at least paying students lip service like never before. And new land in Allston means Harvard could actually find room for a new student center.

The Space Solution

Accompanying every move for increased social capital on campus, there has been a corresponding drive for space. When women sought to establish themselves more firmly on campus, they formed clubs and drafted mission statements committing themselves to property search. When the Sigma Chi fraternity wanted to make its mark, it did the same thing.

Both Greeks and women’s groups are trying to tap into a market currently dominated by final clubs. Their inability to compete with the multi-million dollar final clubs has been a prime source of frustration and reflects the related complaint about the final club-dominated late night scene.

It isn’t the exclusivity or the old-boy culture that makes these clubs the lone locus of organized social life. It’s their mansions.

That’s a fact that Kappa Alpha Theta President Megan G. Cameron ’05 readily acknowledges. “We need a facility,” she says. “It would enrich our organization.”

Harvard students have understood the property-party connection for decades. Alongside their more outlandish proposals, both Orenstein and Cooper called on the University to build a campus student center. “Think of it,” Orenstein wrote. “A student center could have...a lounge, space for bands, a bar...perhaps a room for large dance parties. A student center would provide a much needed alternative to the house dining halls for hanging out and partying.”

In Orenstein’s day, this high-minded thinking led to the construction of Loker Commons. Today, Loker provides a daytime lunch and study spot, but it hardly fulfills Orenstein’s vision. Nighttime events have seen low attendance. As UC Secretary Jason L. Lurie ’04 says, “You can’t have a building with sewer smells as your supposed student center.”

Center of Attention

Today, Loker’s failure seems to have tainted any aspirations for a successful social center. UC President Matthew W. Mahan ’05 is focused on finding alternative cures for Harvard’s social malaise. “For us it is time to proactively answer the question of what kind of opportunities we want to have at Harvard,” Mahan wrote in an e-mail to several House open lists. “The administration isn’t going to do it for us.”

For a long time, that was true. In 1999, after four final clubs tightened their guest policies, students looked to then Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 for help. He didn’t give it. “How can it be helpful to students’ development as adults and as citizens for the College to assume responsibility for seeing to it that students do not feel they need to study on Friday nights?” he told The Crimson.

That left the burden squarely on the shoulders of student groups, who have to some extent welcomed the challenge. The UC recently proposed an increase in the student activities fee to pump-up its party-endorsing quotient.

Under Mahan’s vision, the increased funds would help the Council meet students’ social demands. “We’re responsible for providing a social opportunity for everyone separated from organizations like final clubs that thrive on exclusivity,” Mahan says. In addition to the party fund, Mahan and Blickstead are trying to institute other neutral social options. “We’re trying to push for more variety in social life with events like movies, hypnotists and concerts,” Blickstead says. The council authorized the Harvard Concert Commission to begin negotiations with nine artists at its Feb. 29 meeting, and Busta Rhymes has just accepted the UC’s $40,000 bid. In addition to concerts, Mahan hopes to foster social life by playing on class-year divisions. The UC has plans to have a night at the Kong for juniors, a night at Gillian’s and a barbecue for sophomores and Loker nights for first-years. And Mahan’s vice president, Michael R. Blickstead ’05, says the Council hopes to dole out more money to House Stein Clubs to help prop up social life.

The UC’s goal of building a stronger alternative to final clubs is on point. But its method has been problematic. All plans hinge on propping up the random social life students already have—and that students always lament. Because the UC has no hope of financing a student center—no matter how much the student activity fee rises—it has instead focused on these organic changes.

The one source with the power to create a student center is the administration. And while Mahan still seems to think the administration can’t help, for the first time they seem to be listening—or at least considering taking matters into their own hands.

Administering the Cure

Since Lewis’ abrupt departure, the new set of administrators overseeing the College have said they want to be more active in pushing for social life.

“The College is now recognizing a distinction between extracurricular activities and a social life,” Kidd says. After watching the formation of groups like harvardparties.com and the UC’s Concert Commission, Kidd says she realized the demand for more social alternatives was salient. And perhaps more important, the upcoming move to Allston has provided a chance to think toward the future. A survey sent to all undergraduates asks detailed questions about social habits, underscoring the University’s recent interest in the subject.

Perhaps because of this heightened interest in student social life, the University is seriously considering building a student center in Allston, according to Kidd.

One of the most aggressive backers of a student center might be University Health Services Director David S. Rosenthal ’59. Rosenthal says that he supports the move to Allston largely because of the opportunity it provides to build a neutral social center. The center could be critical to improving student mental health, he says. “Students need to put academics in perspective. They shouldn’t come to Harvard just to get all A’s.”

Rosenthal cites a 1937 study by American philanthropist William T. Grant, which followed 268 Harvard students through College life and beyond. According to Rosenthal, the study concluded that the more sociable students do better in life. “Being a loner and irresponsible drinking have an adverse effect on later life,” he says. “Think 20 to 30 years ahead. It’s difficult to get out of a social rut after college.”

In addition to the importance of a healthy social life on its own, sociability is also an important supplement to academic life. “Improving the quality of life means improving the ways that students cope with the stress they will inevitably have,” Rosenthal says. “We are trying to graduate a class of scholars who can be leaders in social environments.”

With even scientific authority on its side, a student center is a seeming can’t-miss.

But of course, mere interest doesn’t make success. If the University goes through with the student center, it must be willing to make a considerable investment in order to avoid a Loker-eque catastrophe. But surveying student opinion is a good place to start.

Ironically, the accumulated student complaint over the past two decades has finally had some impact. According to Kidd, two forces stymied administrative action in the past. “One is that Harvard does not have much centrally located space available to build,” she says, indicating that the Allston purchase could change that. “The other is that there was not a recognition that students’ needs for social life are changing.”

Kidd notes another reason the administration has not jumped to invest in social life. She says that because social discontent didn’t affect admissions numbers, administrators didn’t pay it much attention.

Harvard’s old age and long-standing traditions have also thwarted rapid change. “If you’re a 370 year-old organization, you don’t change quickly,” Kidd says. “Harvard had an obligation to see if this new need for social life was a trend or just a temporary desire before implementing new goals.”

Twenty years of complaint seem to have done the trick.