Will They Ever Understand Us?

For some student group leaders, Harvard just doesn’t get it.

Dean of the College Evelynn M. Hammonds may have named it one of her top three goals, but when students clamor for more social space, Dean of Student Life Suzy M. Nelson—who leads the Office of Student Life—does not even mention the subject when listing her priorities.

While students complain about the difficult logistics of nightlife, Nelson praises Harvard’s alcohol policies as relatively generous.

But students and administrators both agree that the Office of Student Life should remain relatively hands-off, guiding programming run by students rather than engineering events for them.

While this freedom is extended to daytime events—such as conferences, panels, and meetings—the College’s reins tighten when the sun goes down, when the music starts blaring, and when the kegs are tapped.

“Their priority is for everyone to be safe, legal, and financially sound, and I appreciate all of the training they have for student group leaders. And they give a lot of support,” says Courtney L. Blair ’10, former president of the Harvard International Relations Council. “But where our priorities diverge is we also want to make our organizations social organizations.”

It is these divergent priorities that prove difficult for students and administrators to reconcile.

A QUESTION OF LIABILITY

Student leaders say they sometimes struggle to hold events that satisfy both Massachusetts drinking laws and their members’ desires for lax alcohol restrictions. Whereas the administration focuses on the former, student group leaders often emphasize the latter, bringing the two into inevitable disagreement.

“That’s always going to be a conflict that can’t be resolved,” Blair says. “You can’t blame them. That’s their job, and it’s our job to push back against the rules and not want to follow them.”

But some student group leaders point at certain restrictions—such as those involving Beverage Authorization Teams—as examples of a broader disconnect between the administration and undergraduates. According to some students, the administration’s attitude focuses on mitigating risk and minimizing liability for the College as much as possible, often at the expense of a typical collegiate nightlife.

“Harvard has a very strict ‘look out for number one’ policy in that respect,” says Thomas A. Johnson ’11, president of the Harvard chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. “They treat us like we’re children, like we’re all enormous liabilities—and quite frankly, that’s disheartening.”

In addition to requiring Harvard University Police Department detail teams to be present at events with 100 or more attendees, the Office of Student Life requires BAT teams at student organization events that serve alcohol, charging $21.50 per hour for a minimum of four hours. Nelson calls this policy “a great model” that allows for “the kind of responsible behavior that we want students and adults to have.”

However, this perceived focus on liability appears to limit the events allowed by the College, yielding activities that some find to be childish and sometimes preventing clubs from holding the events that they desire.

For instance, Qing “Emma” Wang ’12, co-chair of the Harvard College Queer Students and Allies, says the club tried to hold a party in mid-April in Adams House. After the College informed QSA that it had failed to meet the administration’s event registration specifications, the group was forced to cancel the highly-publicized event at the last minute.

“It would appear that things they would want us to do aren’t things college students would actually do,” says Lisa M. Yu ’11, co-president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Chinese Students Association. “I think they have tamer ideas of what the student population actually is interested in.”

Moreover, according to some student leaders, these restrictions push social events out of common spaces and into dorm rooms, a move that could place students at a higher risk.

CRAMPED AND COMPLEX

If the problem of alcohol and liability is tough, many student leaders find the social space situation to be downright dismal.

Difficulties they encounter when looking for event space center around two main factors: a dearth of available but highly-demanded space makes finding meeting locations troublesome, and a panoply of varying regulations regarding access to spaces complicates the room reservation process.

The spaces—consisting of rooms in Yard buildings, the Houses, and the Student Organization Center at Hilles—each face their own limitations. The availability of classrooms in the Yard is restricted by the Harvard Extension School’s evening classes, and the River Houses each have different rules surrounding use of their common rooms, spaces which must be reserved using different systems.

Meanwhile, the locations of Quad Houses and the SOCH present a geographic deterrence. For this reason, no student group leader interviewed by The Crimson for this article said that the SOCH was a particularly useful space.

Although the Dean of Student Life did not say she counts social space among her goals, Hammonds says that social space is one of her top priorities and that she is exploring several options, including the creation of “no-work zones” for students.

Student group leaders have offered various potential solutions, including a proposal to standardize access to River House common rooms. The suggestion that emerges as the most common, though, is the establishment of a student center.

THE STUDENT CENTER

Joshua J. Nuni ’10, the president of the Student Community Center Foundation, has long wanted a student center.

A project in its infancy, the SCCF is looking for properties it can purchase and convert into an all-purpose center for undergraduates.

“We’re driven by how compelling this vision is,” Nuni says. “It’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to do something that is improbable but really cool and compelling.”

But however compelling the idea may be, the University finds itself recovering from the recent recession and facing an uncertain financial future, one that restricts its ability to engage in new capital ventures.

“We still remain in a financially constrained moment,” Hammonds says. “We cannot build a new student center right now.”

Student leaders say they support the idea, while acknowledging its pecuniary infeasibility. Given that Hammonds has said a student center is currently impractical, some suggest—and Hammonds says she is considering—a more limited option.

“I think the administration should just think about the spaces it already has and how they can differently regulate them,” Wang says.

LIBERTY FOR ALL

Nelson’s emphasis on “student-centered leading and student-centered learning” mirrors student leaders’ conceptions of the Office’s ideal role.

“Student life is about us coaching students to run their own events and activities. We have a real small staff, and that’s by design,” Nelson says. “The people who are supposed to be doing things are the leaders of the 400-plus organizations.”

Many student group leaders say they appreciate the freedom to manage their own academic programming while knowing that the OSL and its resources are available as support if necessary.

Both the leaders and the administration cite this independence as an opportunity for students to learn from the challenges they face.

“On the one hand, you can say they’re not supporting us, but at the same time, it’s a really good learning experience for us to sort through all of that ourselves,” Blair says.

And some of the OSL’s shortcomings could be due to the sheer mass of student groups, around 400 in total, Nelson says.

“They’re not always that helpful to us, but again, we can’t complain,” says Joseph P. Resnek ’11, a captain of the Harvard Mock Trial Association. “What are they going to do, help all 10,000 groups on campus?”

But according to Wang, the College’s main weakness continues to be its uncertainty about how to address an important aspect of most student groups’ functions—social events.

“I think they’ve done fairly well at initiating programming that has broad appeal that doesn’t include parties,” she says. “I think what they need to work on are the things that happen after dark, the ones that are inherently less safe.”

“It feels like the administration is kind of afraid to tackle it,” she adds.

—Melody Y. Hu and Eric P. Newcomer contributed to the reporting of this article.

—Staff writer Danielle J. Kolin can be reached at dkolin@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Naveen N. Srivatsa can be reached at srivatsa@fas.harvard.edu.