Yard Life First, House Life Second

Life in Harvard Yard isn’t perfect. First-years often find themselves forced to develop their courses of study without the resources they need, and they face a social scene that makes any stories they may have heard about the glories of college life seem like sick jokes. So we are happy to see that the recently released Harvard College Curricular Review report tries to address first-year problems.

Unfortunately, a key part of the report’s proposal for restructuring first-year advising will make the Yard a worse place to live. The report’s plan to switch to a Yale-like system—where first-years are arbitrarily assigned to Houses before arriving in Cambridge and forced to live in entryways with their future House-mates—will not help first-year advising, and it will undermine that sense of community which is the chief benefit of Yard life.

Choice isn’t always easy. First-years in the process of choosing seven people to spend their next three years with don’t always love every minute of the experience. But by giving them the opportunity to pick blockmates from the whole freshman class, the Harvard system allows first-years to preserve close friendships and ensure decent living arrangements in their Houses. The Harvard system may not be perfect, but, unlike our counterparts at Yale, we have the freedom to create the kind of House life we want.

This freedom also helps House life once first-years move off the Yard. Randomization was good for Harvard, but if students have absolutely no control over who lives with them, they will be less attached to their Houses. The Harvard system allows students to make sure that they will be personally connected to at least a few of their House-mates. This can ease the transition to House life and give sophomores an extra reason to feel at home in their Houses.

The blocking system also encourages first-years to reach out beyond their dorms. If they know that they have to live with the people from their entryway for three years, students will be more likely to confine their social circle to the people they live with on the Yard. Students who branch out beyond their entryway and develop close friendships with students from other dorms are punished by a system that might arbitrarily assign their closest friends to the Quad while they are stuck in Mather.

The concern with first-year advising that inspired the report’s plan is legitimate. But a few simple changes could do more to remedy this situation without hurting student life. First, Harvard should acknowledge that first-years often learn most from their peers. Instead of placing grad students and office workers—some of whom were never undergraduates at Harvard—in the first-year dorms, the College should use those prime proctor suites to house undergraduates who can help first-years cope with the difficulties that they so recently experienced. If the Yard had one proctor per dorm, first-years would have more than enough adult supervision, if the College really believes adult supervision is what first-years need. This would encourage inter-class interaction—a stated goal of the curricular review—more effectively than a Yale-like housing system, and it would not compromise students’ ability to choose their House-mates.

The curricular review is right to worry about first-years. But a Yale-like housing system would hurt, not help, Harvard’s Yardlings. A few simple changes could improve advising while preserving the things that make the Harvard House system work.