Lifestyles of the Cramped and Irate

As sophomore year approaches, freshmen, beware—the Yard’s bunk beds and random roommates can be pretty bad, but some of the worst living at Harvard is in the Houses. FM scoured both River and Quad, leaving no roach-infested walk-through unvisited and no synonym for “small” unused, to identify the most atrocious rooms. The few and the proud, all housing sophomores:

Lowell M-12: Crimson editor Joy Z. Chen is at a loss to describe the shape of the Polly Pocket-sized common room in her double—“A truncated square? A pentagon, I guess.” The bedroom is even tinier, requiring Chen to climb over her desk to enter. Other highlights include the closet’s “distinctive Tetris-block shape” and the dumpsters outside the door.

Dunster K-51: This geometric marvel features a hexagonal common room with two trapezoidal fire doors, a bedroom the size of an Apley closet, and ceilings so slanted that the rooms are virtually pyramidal. The lucky Yoshitaka Yamamoto and Andrew Q. Jing live directly under Dunster’s belltower and above ongoing construction; scenic Leverett Towers, Mather House, and the leaky, taped-over skylight all do their part to keep sunlight from ever entering. In a word: ridiculous.

Pforzheimer Holmes, 3rd Floor: Those the lottery truly hates don’t just end up in the Quad—they’re on the third floor of Holmes in singles serving as miniscule doubles. “My blockmate said it was like getting Quaded twice,” says Milo Harman. “There is no room for excess, therefore we have no excess,” says Cara E. Ferrentino of the one-room “cozy nook” she shares with her roommate. Apparently, a Zen attitude can make even Holmes’s communal bathrooms tolerable.

These rooms all share one common trait: They’re so bad, they almost pass for housing at any other college in America. You have been warned.