HoCos Gear Up for Annual Housing Day

Few days on campus are host to the emotional roller coaster that is the morning of Housing Day—and upperclassmen in the 12 undergraduate Houses plan to ratchet up the enthusiasm among their new housemates.

Around 7:30 a.m. on Thursday, upperclass dorm-stormers will pound on the doors of freshmen to personally deliver housing assignments. They will then continue the celebration in Annenberg Hall by dispensing House-related paraphernalia to newly-minted housemates.

Some Houses have gotten a head start on Housing Day by promoting their respective homes with humorous videos and eye-catching posters.

Currier, Leverett, and Pforzheimer have already sought to whet the appetite of freshmen with videos ranging from musical homages to “C-Haus,” to an extended rant from Adolf Hitler about the pains of living in Adams.

Meanwhile, Eliot has been working on the production of a video, wrote Eliot HoCo co-chair Tian Feng ’11 in an e-mailed statement. The Mather House Committee promised to release a video a minute before midnight yesterday.

Currier has traditionally set itself apart from the other Houses by “having far more spirit,” wrote Sami Majadla ’11, Currier House Committee chair, in an e-mailed statement. “We plan on keeping that tradition alive this year.”

Majadla added that freshmen who receive Currier as their housing assignment should look forward to “spectacular fireworks over the Quad” and a night of paintballing in the hallways of Cabot.

But not all of the Houses plan on launching elaborate advertising campaigns catered toward freshmen—perhaps the result of the sentiment that such preparations are unnecessary.

“Kirkland isn’t very interested in this Housing Day competition stuff,” said Kelly N. Bodwin ’11, Kirkland HoCo chair. “We know we love it here, and we know the new freshmen will love it here—we don’t feel the need to prove our greatness on one random day out of the year when we’ve already proved it the other 364.”

Bodwin said that her house is not “doing much” in the weeks leading up to Housing Day, though it has voted on a T-shirt design and plans to hold a Master’s Open House on the night of Housing Day to welcome the incoming freshmen.

Despite the advertising campaigns that have emerged in the days leading up to Housing Day, the Houses remain good-natured about the competition.

"Between HoCos, there’s always some friendly competition about making good posters and getting the biggest screaming mob,” Bodwin said. “But there’s not a lot of ‘My House is better’ competition between us—we’re all on HoCo because we think our House is the best.”