We Must Protect This House

Now that Quincy House has slapped interhouse dining restrictions on its dining hall—by banning first-years at dinner—it might want to place a security guard in front of the groovy neo-disco mood-wall in its dining hall, lest it get stolen by the same hooligans that swiped the Adams House gong last year.

The virtual shouts over House e-mail lists, formal house meetings and kleptomaniacal retaliation stemming from the implementation of restrictions indicate how contentious these rules can be. The increasingly complex restrictions seem to generate so much controversy because of a seemingly impossible reconciliation of two lofty ideals: the creation and maintenance of a definable House community through a dining hall, and the integration of first-years into upperclass life. Those who believe that the former concept is more important tend to support Houses’ dining hall restrictions, and those who believe the latter concept prevails tend to oppose them. It is difficult to deem one principle to be higher than the other, but when we empirically examine what happens to dining halls when there are no interHouse restrictions—namely, the hordes of first-years who arrive—we must conclude that Houses should be allowed to create interhouse restrictions.

First, we should not underestimate the importance of the dining hall to House life. Those students who are “unfortunate” enough not to live in a House convenient to the Wrap have the advantage of a dining hall where you can find a seat, sit with a gaggle of your friends, and (gasp) actually recognize the people who are sitting around the room. It’s this recognition of who lives in your House (and who doesn’t) that creates an immediate sense of community within the Houses. It’s no coincidence that in the Quad Houses, where the dining halls are rarely swarmed by the masses, there is a significantly increased feeling of House community. The roaming herds of anonymous first-years do little to enhance such a feeling in the “convenient” dining halls like Quincy, and they place an enormous burden on the dining hall staff trying to keep pace with their appetites and dirty dishes.

This argument does not address, however, the fate of first-years, who are already socially isolated from the rest of the College. The quasi-exclusive nature of the House system, which is slowly intensifying as inter-House restrictions increase, will only serve to exclude first-years further. But encouraging—or merely allowing—first-years to overcrowd upperclass dining halls does little for upperclass integration when first-years arrive by the entryway. The front page of The Crimson on January 24 showed five Greenough residents sitting together in the Quincy dining hall, gabbing only among themselves as they chowed down their supper. We only need recall our own first year to remember why we ate in upperclass dining halls: the feeling of self-importance, and, for some, geographic convenience, but certainly not to meet upperclass students. Certainly, there are other ways to better integrate first-years into upperclass social life, including upperclass peer-advising, and, more dramatically, testing a Yale-style housing system.

In deciding to bar first-years from its dinners, Quincy made the correct decision to stem its overcrowding. Of course, first-years are still allowed to eat in Quincy so long as they are the “invited guests” of a Quincy resident—in other words, when first-year/upperclass interaction actually occurs. And upperclassmen, who generally eat in their own dining halls but who will occasionally eat with their friends elsewhere, will eat in Quincy less often as the novelty of the new dining hall wears off.

So kudos to Quincy for standing up to the Wigglesworthian hordes. Even the residents of the self-proclaimed “People’s House” deserve a dining hall they can call their own.

Matthew S. Meisel ’07, a Crimson associate editorial chair, is a chemistry concentrator in Currier House.