A Holiday in the Square

Dining halls slept. Lamont was locked. Traffic slowed, sometimes stood still.

It was Thanksgiving.

In quiet corners across campus, students cultured lab cells and honed hockey shots. A handful of students tried to save the cost of pricey airfares and catch up on neglected work, and got a glimpse of Harvard, moving at a snail’s pace.

“Even just walking down Mass. Ave., there were hardly any cars,” said Katharine M. Chute ’11. “It was pretty quiet, and it was kind of nice.”

By Thursday, most Harvard students had left for home or vacation, leaving behind athletes, students from across the pond or across the continent, and thesis-writing seniors.

Nancy A. Chow ’08 worked on her grad school applications.

“I’m using this weekend to catch up on some work,” she said. “I just want to get into grad school.”

Research came first for Voranaddha Vacharathit ’10, who spent the holiday in a lab culturing cells.

Others said cost and travel time led them to stay put for the holiday.

Yuliya S. Nikolova ’09, who is from Bulgaria, said plane tickets were too expensive—and flights too lengthy at 12 to 13 hours each way—to make the trip worthwhile.

“It was nice not having to worry about doing any work or having deadlines,” said Chute, a forward on the varsity women’s hockey team whose athletic obligations required her to stay in Cambridge. Her Thanksgiving morning was dedicated to a hockey practice with her teammates.

Some students, like Ayodele R. Osasona ’07-’08, spent Thanksgiving on campus purely by choice. “Thanksgiving is so close to Christmas that it simply makes sense to wait,” said Osasona, who passed up a weekend at home in Atlanta.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, members of the Woodbridge Society, an organization for Harvard’s international students, bonded through a Thanksgiving-kickoff party on Wednesday, dinner at Quincy House on Thursday, and a movie night in Lowell House on Saturday.

According to Woodbridge Society board member Or Gadish ’10, the goal of the events was to share international cultures and to provide a sense of community to students studying far from home.

“The events are [catered] to internationals,” he said. “A lot of people don’t have friends or family in New York.”

On Thanksgiving, most businesses and restaurants in the Square were closed. The same went for Harvard’s dining halls, with the exception of Quincy House, which, according to dining checker Lia Fajardo, saw 875 people swipe in for its service of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.