What’s in a Name? Harvard, Undergraduate, College, and Student

While common students spent the first Sunday of the semester reuniting and catching up with friends, student organization officers, stashed away at a meeting in the distant and dreary Student Organization Center at Hilles, were presented with a high-stakes and urgent update pertinent to the improvement of student life on campus.

What could possibly be so important? The Harvard College Dean of Students Office announced that it would begin enforcing a rule restricting Harvard branding in student organization names. According to the policy, club names must contain either “Harvard Undergraduate” or “Harvard College” and “Student(s)” if they were founded after 1998, the year in which the previously-unenforced rule came into effect.

We commend Associate Dean for Student Engagement Jason R. Meier for this worthy crusade, an indisputable institutional priority. In an era of political polarization, state interference in University syllabi, and catastrophic climate change, we are comforted by the administration's close focus on branding accuracy.

With Meier’s help — hand-in-hand with undergraduate, and undergraduate only, student club leaders — Harvard’s campus can usher in a new age of revived and inclusive student programming, lofty goals that current naming guidelines had (somehow) clearly hindered. In the spirit of the changing times, we, The Crimson Editorial Board, humbly offer some new naming policy ideas to implement alongside this new one.

1. The DSO must lead by example in this crucial, valiant endeavor to make names more accurate. The office ought to rename itself, and do so fast, lest any students or bureaucratic processes be harmed in the most terrifyingly intangible ways. The “Dean of Harvard College and Undergraduate Students Office for Harvard College Undergraduates” is a feasible replacement.

2. Similarly, Meier’s position should henceforth be known as that of “Chief Undergraduate Engagement and Student Life Improvement Czar at Harvard College.” Associate Dean for Student Engagement is obviously far too vague for our new philosophy.

3. In that vein, Harvard should require all professors to vocally introduce themselves, in every setting, as “Harvard College Professor of Students,” promptly adding their area of study and main doctoral thesis advisor, if applicable. After all, if student organizations can (and, for some reason yet to be clearly explained by the DSO, must) go to absurd extremes to clarify their membership, our campus deserves a more easily identifiable faculty body.

4. In order to be clear “in all instances and contexts,” House name abbreviations such as “Eliot” ought to be prohibited under punishment of “Being Forced to Appear Before the Harvard College Administrative Board”-ing. “Charles W. Eliot House” barely provides sufficient clarity; "Charles W. Eliot House for Undergraduate Students of Harvard College" is best.

5. The Harvard Corporation should only be referred to by its legal name, “the President and Fellows of Harvard College,” and, as usual, should be brought into conversation only if strictly necessary (discussion of undergraduate politics, the most influential arena on campus, remains preferable to analysis of the power brokers).

6. No more acronyms. They’re clearly too confusing and misleading, far too complex for the average Harvard affiliate. All student organizations must always be referred to by their full legal name.

7. In this spirit of tautology and specificity, the Quad should now be known as the “Radcliffe Quadrangle,” and the “Radcliffe Quadrangle” only. Any colloquialisms only cause confusion and should be disallowed.

8. Similarly, to eliminate confusion, Annenberg Hall should officially be renamed “Berg.” Everybody already calls it that anyways. Do better.

9. On the subject of Berg, it’s imperative that we change the lettuce options in the salad bar to iceberg lettuce only. Other offerings are inconsistent with its naming and visual culture.

10. Meanwhile, our beloved Harvard-Yale must be renamed the “Harvard Undergraduate-Yale Undergraduate Sporting Event Featuring the Sport of Football,” for clarity. A name like “Harvard-Yale” implies some sort of moral equivalence. Surely, that can’t be the case.

11. When Housing Day arrives, Quadlings — or undergraduates living in the Radcliffe Quadrangle — ought not to pose as Riverlings. Many of the freshmen are confused by it. This is why they cry.

12. Also on that note, the Dean of Harvard College and Undergraduate Students Office for Harvard College Undergraduates should implement a new policy prohibiting ’Throp, Eli-lit, Kirk or any of the other House sign names on Housing Day — doing so runs counter to our new mantra of name accuracy.

13. The freshman union dormitories shall never again be called the union dormitories, but rather the “Harvard Freshman Undergraduate Not-in-Harvard-Yard” dormitories. They are not in Harvard Yard and therefore not in the union.

14. As for Harvard College — well, it should model maximal adherence to its rules in its own name. Perhaps “Harvard Undergraduate College”? Or “Harvard Place for College Students”? No — “Harvard Undergraduate College and Students Learning Institute for the Acronymically Inept” is most apt.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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