Little Rascals Roam Harvard Halls

It might have been a shock for Adams House residents of all ages when nude males streaked through the dining hall on the eve of Primal Scream, but the sight was especially surprising for Adams resident Selah Piper.

After all, most three-year-olds rarely see college students in the buff.

“The events at hand were at eye level for her—and she doesn’t miss anything,” Selah’s mother, Adams House residential tutor Lilly B. Piper, said. “Thankfully,” she added, “my husband got to her in time”—and prevented the pre-schooler from getting an early introduction to anatomy.

For Selah and the other daughters and sons of residential tutors, growing up in Harvard’s undergraduate dorms has led to more than a few untraditional childhood experiences. Ethan Howell, age three, has attended Adams House’s Drag Night every year since his birth.

But families living in the Houses say that children can benefit from the sense of community in the dorms and the cultural opportunities that Harvard affords.

LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS

Like many three-year-olds, Ethan Howell is a die-hard baseball fan. He knows all the names of Harvard’s varsity baseball players.

But unlike most three-year-olds, Ethan is just as likely to see his idols at breakfast as at the ballpark.

His favorite player is first baseman Josh Klimkiewicz ’06, who lives just a few blocks away in Leverett.

Ethan’s mother, Adams House tutor Sharon L. Howell, says she’s happy to be raising her son on Harvard’s campus. “All the stuff that is going on in the college, like the sports games are great,” says Howell. “It just feels so extraordinary.”

Adam M. Jasienski ’08, a Leverett House resident raised in Winthrop as a child, remembers the cultural opportunities available to him growing up at Harvard.

“My favorite thing ever was Cultural Rhythms,” Jasienski says, referring to the Harvard Foundation’s February celebration of diversity. “We went every year.”

“My parents took me to a lot of classical concerts too, and we went to all the Harvard museums, especially the Peabody Museum,” adds Jasienski.

The community within the houses is a valuable asset as well.

“I don’t know what I would have been like if I didn’t live at Harvard,” says Jasienski. “It made me much more open to a different scope of people.”

“I can’t imagine doing this in a dorm like I was in during college,” says Howell, who earned her bachelor’s degree from Connecticut College. “The whole notion of a sense of community makes the situation great here.”

“The students are a huge advantage,” continues Howell. “Besides all the attention he gets, my son has just been around so many great people.”

“We use a lot of the kids as babysitters,” said Piper. “And the staff is wonderful too—they come to our kids’ birthday parties.”

FOUR-LETTER WORDS BEFORE AGE 4

Despite the advantages of raising kids in the Harvard community, child-rearing on a college campus comes with its share of challenges.

Doctors advise tutors to keep their children out of the dining halls for their first three months, so they do not pick up any sicknesses when they have such weak immune systems. “Within a week, we were already coming to the dining hall and letting people touch him,” Howell says of her son Ethan. “Keeping him away was just not practical,” she adds.

“Our children will have the immune systems of cockroaches from being in the dining hall,” Howell adds.

The college atmosphere presents other prickly situations for parents. For instance, language that’s common in college dining halls might not be appropriate for pre-school playgrounds.

“Most people are good about language,” says Piper, “but one time our daughter heard a certain four-letter word and went around saying it.”

“The way people interact is of concern too,” continues Piper. “There are behaviors we have to correct,” she adds. “Seeing student interactions in the dining hall gives us a lot to talk about in terms of sharing and kindness.”

Piper knows not to take events like the Primal Scream runners in Adams too seriously though.

“Overall,” she says that she and her husband, Adams residential tutor Benjamin L. Piper, “definitely just laugh at these kind of ‘happenings.’ [Selah] is constantly getting an informal education in the House!”

GETTING OUT, AND GETTING BACK IN

But an in-House education might not be enough. Tutors realize they need to make sure their children can interact with peers—not just college students.

“My son is so baffled sometimes by other little kids being mean, because he is used to everyone being nice,” says Howell.

One way to make up for this is to enroll children in programs with their peers early on.

“Our daughter attends a Montessori school and if we were in an ordinary situation, we might have enrolled her later,” says Piper. “With this situation, it was really valuable to let her identify with her peer group though.”

But Jasienski, a product of a dorm upbringing, says he still identifies with the campus on which he was raised.

Explaining his decision to enroll at the College, Jasienski says, “I wanted to come back here because it was my home.”

—Staff writer Patrick S. Lahue can be reached at plahue@fas.harvard.edu.