The Next Dean of Harvard College Needs To Be Fun

It seems we can’t go long without receiving an email about high-level administrative turnover at Harvard.

This time, it’s our beloved dean of the College, Rakesh Khurana, who after 11 years at the helm, will step down from his deanship at the end of the academic year.

I am sad to see him go. There was genuine warmth and evident care for students in every interaction that I shared with him. He is so approachable that I could strike up a conversation with him about almost anything — from what I just bought at the Coop to the new Eliot House faculty deans — without ever feeling awkward.

When I think of an administrator I don’t picture a casual Instagram account overflowing with selfies of students, or an individual that is as recognizable as he is accessible. Instead I picture scenes of pointless meetings, unnecessary emails filled with corporate buzzwords that say next to nothing, and faceless employees holed up in University Hall — or, worse, the administrative labyrinth that is the bowels of the Smith Campus Center.

Dean Khurana disrupts this image. Whether it be his constant presence on campus or his Instagram account famous for blurry snapshots of student life, he has never shrank into the background.

Still, his tenure was not flawless: Though well-intentioned, several Khurana-led policies had major consequences for campus social life.

There were misguided and ultimately fruitless attempts to ban single-gender social clubs as well as an abstinence-only approach to fun, spearheaded by the Dean of Students Office, which reports to him. Although these efforts might have been motivated by a noble desire to protect students, the disparate effects on students only amplified much of the exclusivity Khurana tried to eliminate.

For example, while women’s sororities were all forced to disband or go co-ed and have struggled to reestablish a presence on campus, all-male final clubs — which are older and wealthier — escaped the sanctions virtually unscathed. Additionally, strict rules and excessive bureaucratic red-tape have continued to make inclusive fun hard to find at Harvard.

In reflecting on Khurana’s tenure, I am hopeful that an individual with just as much charisma but who better recognizes the value of organic, administration-free fun, will fill the role. We don’t need a career bureaucrat or faceless administrative cog, but someone who can and will interact and interface with students.

A current or former House faculty dean would fit the bill well, as they live, work, and dine with students on a daily basis — an experience that will have cultivated the skills and sensibilities necessary for a student-facing administrator. One cannot forget that Dean Khurana himself followed this path, first serving as faculty dean of Cabot House.

While the next dean of the College does not have to be selected from the current crop of faculty deans, it would be a shame if they were a career administrator with whom students’ only familiarity is a signature at the bottom of pointless emails destined to be ignored.

Still, the next dean must do more than rival Dean Khurana’s approachable persona — they must also better understand their role in supporting student life. Creating a maze of red tape that overburdens and complicates students’ social lives is not effective or conducive to happy and healthy students — these barriers to socialization send students looking for venues that are unrestricted and certainly less safe. College administrators should certainly not appoint themselves risk managers of student fun, as they did the last time The Game was held at Harvard.

The repeated failures of attempts to impose on the social lives of students offers a lesson to the next dean of the College that they would be wise to heed: Show us you care but don’t overbear.

Henry P. Moss IV ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a History concentrator in Eliot House.