Better House Parties

Parties in Harvard’s 12 Houses tend to be stratified between intimate dorm room affairs and massive dining hall extravaganzas. The pilot Student Initiated Programs fund promises to change that. The fund, for which the UC began accepting event applications last Friday, will distribute money for two approved, medium-sized parties this semester. The two Houses hosting the parties, Pforzheimer and Quincy, will match the UC’s contribution. The two parties will be used as a barometer to test the effectiveness of the fund at providing resources for safe, medium-sized parties where alcohol may be served, a combination for which students have been clamoring. Overall, the SIP fund is a step in the right direction toward improving Harvard social space issues, and we encourage students and administrators to support the program.

One of the SIP fund’s greatest benefits is that the parties it will sponsor will be inclusive. Many other similarly sized events on campus—parties that are large enough to feel exciting yet small enough to facilitate personal interactions—are limited to members of a student group or are exclusive in some other way. Students often feel left out of these ideally sized gatherings, a major issue with social space on campus. In response, the SIP fund promises to support exactly the types of events that undergraduates want and that all undergraduates can attend. The parties must be located in a public space but also cannot be advertised via posters or email lists; hence, the parties are intended to be medium in size but simultaneously will be completely open to any student who wants to attend. Moreover, adding to their inclusivity and making them even more accessible, SIP events will be free and will therefore be a financial and social possibility for all students.

Funding these parties will also encourage a good use of social space that already exists. Quincy House Master Lee Gehrke cited the dining hall, House Master’s residence, and the House Junior Common Room as approved spaces for SIP parties. These high-quality venues are ideal for the types of gatherings that the fund will sponsor, yet at the moment they seem to be used largely for sporadic House events. This is a shame, because beautiful and large rooms such as JCRs have the potential to serve as centers for student social life in a broader context. We hope the SIP-funded events will lead undergraduates to understand social spaces within the Houses as places where they can hold many different types of gatherings.

Although the SIP fund is clearly not the much-missed 2003-2007 UC party grants program, it is a more responsible and reformed version. The College cannot legally provide alcohol to underage drinkers—something that the party fund seemed to do. Yet one of the chief assets of the party fund was that it eliminated many socioeconomic barriers to holding good parties on campus. The SIP fund correctly understands this need, but tackles it in a more administratively palatable, and thus more sustainable, way.

Yet, all this being said, Harvard’s social space issues run deeper than what can be solved by a fund that will allow each House one to two parties per semester. Every weekend, hundreds of students are frustrated by the lack of inclusive, high-quality events—as of now, this program will only reach a very small portion of these constituents.

Nevertheless, although it is only a small step, the SIP fund is still an achievement, and students should make sure to attend these parties and put the funds to good use. By supporting SIP-funded parties, students will send the signal that there is a demand for inclusive, medium-sized gatherings on campus, and that the UC and the administration should make even greater efforts to facilitate their existence.