Paying Heed to Patriots’ Day

This past Monday, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts marked Patriots’ Day with historical reenactments of the Battles of Lexington and Concord and the 120th running of the Boston Marathon. Numerous schools and universities in the Boston metro area celebrated with a day off from classes. This list of institutions, however, did not include Harvard. By not celebrating the state-wide Patriots’ Day as an official university holiday, Harvard is hindering its ability to foster a strong university community and to integrate within the wider Greater Boston community.

Thirteen undergraduates ran the Marathon this past Monday with the Harvard College Marathon Challenge, while others ran with a different affiliation. Some volunteered for the Boston Athletic Association, and many went to spectate and support their friends. But many students could not join the festivities due to their course schedules—a regrettable conflict that we hope will not exist in the future. Harvard should join many of its fellow Boston area institutions of higher learning in declaring Patriots' day a university-wide holiday.

Of course, it is not feasible for Harvard to cancel classes every time some of its talented students participate in a world-class event, nor should it cancel classes for every holiday. However, we believe that Patriots' Day—a commemoration of the Revolutionary Battles of Lexington and Concord—calls for special treatment due to its importance to Boston and the surrounding region.

As the Admissions Office often points out to prospective students, the University is an integral part of the wider Boston community. The University’s students should thus be free, if not encouraged, to join in the day’s traditions, whether that participation entails seeing an early morning reenactment in Lexington, sitting in the bleachers at Fenway Park, cheering at the finish line, or actually running in the Marathon.

Administrators often speak about the need to foster a sense of community, and that mission must focus on the community both within and beyond the gates of this institution. In the past, we have called for the administration to move Housing Day to help foster House community; today, we ask that, moving forward, the administration move classes from Patriots’ Day to help foster community on an even larger scale. This change would also give faculty and staff the opportunity to spend the day with their communities.

The College is already examining its daily class schedule in anticipation of the Allston campus' completion; it would be appropriate to consider its academic calendar as part of the same process. If this day must be replaced by an extra day elsewhere, it is a small price to pay for the opportunity to celebrate our region’s traditions on Patriots’ Day—a point of pride and source of communal strength, especially after the Marathon bombing three years ago. Harvard should show its support for Boston and the wider region by allowing its community to be fully present.