Phallic Enough

So many Harvard students have put Widener’s isolated stacks to non-academic use, one might imagine they were built for baby-making. But Widener’s architect has nothing on the designers of Leverett House, who may have managed to incorporate sex into each one of the windows in Leverett’s McKinlock Hall.

It doesn’t take a sexually frustrated freshman to recognize the arrow-headed tip and vague double circles at the bottom. The centerpiece of each window’s metal grate appears phallic shaped (see photo).

“I’ve always thought that it’s very Leverett,” says resident Jori A. Pearsall ’07.

House Master and Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics Howard Georgi asked not to be interviewed about the windows, stating over e-mail that he has never noticed the shape of their grates.

Nevertheless, some house residents think that the supposedly sultry windows might be sending subliminal messages.

“Leverett does well in the sex survey,” says Leverettite Alana I. Mendelsohn ’09, referring to the Harvard Independent’s annual sex survey, which in 2004 declared that Leverett had one of the highest “non-virgin” rates of the undergraduate houses. “Maybe this has something to do with it.”

That, or maybe it’s just coincidence.