SCR Saw Changing Place, Fit

From Adams to Winthrop, Mather to the Quad, it has been a fixture of the College’s House system, a concept older than the 12 upperclassmen Houses themselves. But some Harvard administrators say that after a history spanning two centuries and an ocean, the Senior Common Room—an idea originally conceived at British universities—is in need of an extensive reevaluation.

According to the Report on Harvard House Renewal, which College Dean Evelynn M. Hammonds released to the public last Tuesday, the SCR is an “outdated” and disconnected component of House life.

Topping the list of 19 proposed recommendations in the report is resolving why the SCR “is not working well for current students and faculty.”

Undergraduates, resident tutors, House Masters, and SCR members themselves echoed similar sentiments, expressing the need to make the SCR more relevant to undergraduates.

Currently, many students know little more than the physical space of the room—and often not even that.

“Honestly, I don’t even know where it is,” said Pforzheimer House resident Elizabeth J.S. Bates ’11.

MORE THAN A ROOM

In numerous interviews with The Crimson, students said they were unaware that the term SCR refers to a group of interdisciplinary faculty, tutors, and other House affiliates.

The Office of Residential Life defines the function of the SCR as providing “undergraduates with an opportunity to seek support and advice from members of the Harvard community at various stages of their professional careers.”

“In any other social circumstance, you don’t always meet someone who becomes a lifelong friend or mentor,” said Myra A. Mayman, who served as Cabot House Master from 1984 to 1988, referencing the expectation that the SCR might foster lasting faculty-student relationships.

Yet a majority of students and SCR-affiliated members of the Harvard community alike said this goal remains largely unfulfilled.

They pointed to a lack of student participation at SCR events and a general dearth of understanding of its function.

“In theory, it’s a great idea to provide undergraduates with access to professionals with career advice,” Mather House resident tutor Joseph S. Ronayne ’92 said.

He added that the reality of Harvard residential life diverges from this expectation.

THROUGH THE AGES

But the goal of the original Oxford and Cambridge SCRs was not to create familial rapports. Diverging from its more formal and stilted English counterpart, the Harvard SCR model was designed to foster casual interaction between faculty and students.

“In England, the professors just sit and stare down at undergraduates. They’re probably only worried about the quality of their wine cellars,” Mayman said.

In establishing the current residential life system in the early twentieth century, University President Abbott L. Lowell, class of 1877, sought to depart from some of the English system’s shortcomings.

To that end, he envisaged the SCR as a way to engender a more convivial and inter-generational academic environment in the Houses.

At its inception, the House system integrated academic and social life—with professors living, teaching, and working in the Houses.

But as the College doubled its undergraduate class size and faculty members began orienting themselves around their disciplines, the role of faculty members in the Houses gradually diminished.

And despite Lowell’s initial intentions, the SCR became perceived in much the same light as its English prototype.

When Adams House Master John G. “Sean” Palfrey ’67 began his tenure, he said the SCR seemed detached from students.

“We found that the SCR was largely made up of a group of older members of the Harvard senior community who knew each other and liked to come together once a week, drink cocktails, eat lunch, and then leave,” he said.

Even though the Houses boasted the presence of prominent faculty members, to students, the SCR remained largely unacknowledged.

“When I was an undergraduate, the SCR had a mysterious quality. We didn’t know what it was about,” said J. Russell Muirhead ’88, who is a University of Texas at Austin professor and Eliot House SCR affiliate.

But Muirhead alluded to the potential for occasional meaningful interaction in the SCR.

As a senior, he recalled attending an SCR function in which he unintentionally sat next to the former Harvard Law School director of admissions.

“After that night, I kept up with her for years,” he said. “It was a shame I didn’t want to go to law school.”

LOOKING AHEAD

Throughout the last decade, Palfrey said that Adams House has attempted to recruit SCR members who would be more interested in directly engaging with undergraduates.

Still, both SCR members and students acknowledged that it is difficult for undergraduates to incorporate SCR functions into their busy schedules.

“Harvard is an unbelievably rich place. There’s a bewildering array of opportunities, so who’s going to go the SCR when Brad Pitt and Angelia Jolie come here?” Mayman said. (Pitt and Jolie were slated to be at a College event earlier this week, but did not end up attending.)

The House Renewal Report recommends fostering “casual yet meaningful” exchanges between undergraduates by supplementing the SCR with a pilot House Fellows Program in some Houses. The new initiative will establish clear expectations for Fellows, who will have short tenures, in order to facilitate informal exchanges with undergraduates.

Based on his experiences as a resident tutor, when he taught classes in Eliot House, Muirhead said that the most effective way to facilitate an intellectual community—as President Lowell envisioned more than seven decades ago—would be to re-integrate academic and residential life.

“Build some nice classrooms in the Houses with that $1 billion,” he said, alluding to the total cost of House renewal—a project to renovate the 12 Houses based on the proposals of the House Renewal Report.

No one wants “the SCR to be a room associated with all the old geezers that used to come and drink by themselves,” Palfrey said.

—Staff writer Bita N. Assad can be reached at bassad@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Ahmed N. Mabruk can be reached at amabruk@fas.harvard.edu.