Expand Interhouse Dining

Are you a freshly-minted sophomore missing the thrill of getting rejected at the door of an MIT fraternity party?

Look no further for that heart-sinking feeling than lunch hours at any of your favorite River Central Houses! (The gruff “who’s guest are you” comes included.)

There are many well-known culture shocks that come with leaving the Yard and becoming an upperclassman: harder courses, House living, and more. But one annoyance goes largely unmentioned — the shift from a convenient, centralized lunch at Annenberg to an inconvenient, fragmented system. In light of current interhouse restrictions, River East residents like myself must trek back to our Houses for lunch. Moreover, without a standard set of interhouse rules, understanding how to eat with those you care about becomes a needlessly complex chore.

There is an easy fix: Harvard should expand the current sister House system that benefits Quad residents to non-central river neighborhoods as well.

As it stands, River Central dining halls closest to our academic buildings are only open to residents during lunch hours, with limited flexibility for residents to bring one guest. Students in further river Houses have no choice but to return to their Houses midday, wasting upwards of fifteen minutes roundtrip depending on the House.

As a resident of a River East house — the farthest out of the three, might I add — after two classes back to back, I have no will to make my way to Mather House and then back to the Yard for the same meal that is served in Adams, Quincy, or any significantly closer House. But dining hall rules and restrictions keep myself and many others from that convenience.

Compare this experience to that of students from the Quad: those lucky (or unlucky) enough to find themselves quadded benefit from the sister House system, under which students may eat at any time at a designated river House. As a result, despite being similarly distant from the Science Center, Quad residents and Mather residents have disparate abilities to dine conveniently.

I understand that many of these restrictions were likely written in the name of “House community,” but community is not forged over scarfed down lunches. It is instead built by unified House events, like weekly Thursday dinners. Lunches split by House promote divisions between classmates or friends attempting to socialize over a brief meal.

Moreover, the restrictions lack a consistent logic: The Inn allows Eliot students to bring one guest, but only between the hours of 1:00 and 2:00 p.m. Lowell follows the same guidelines. For Quincy and Adams, residents may bring a plus one whenever they choose. How are such differences explainable? At the very least, rules should be standardized for the ease of students.

Obviously, the question of capacity comes to mind. If most students are eating in the same Houses, won’t they become overcrowded? Therein lies the application of the extended sister House system, under which students in River East, River West, and the Quad are all assigned one sister house in River Central. Doing so would also do away with the need for needlessly complex guest policies.

Facilitating an easier lunch system that keeps students close to their classes could offer soft incentives to increase student focus, too — a boon to a College currently attempting to increase student prioritization of classes. Overall, expanding the sister House system has many benefits, from providing equitable convenience to all students, removing needlessly arcane guest policies, and working to further the College’s goals in the process.

Salma Abu-Elnaj ’28, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Mather House.