Recognizing Radcliffe’s Legacy

A widespread warren of steam tunnels sprawls under Harvard like a secret network of arteries, circulating the lifeblood of the University’s heating system. From the Business School in the south to the River Houses, Harvard Yard, and the Law School in the north, all the buildings on campus seem to be connected by these complex, walkable catacombs.

However, the same tunnels that unite most of Harvard also divide it.

As commonly perceived by students, the Radcliffe Quadrangle is an outlier. An independent system once belonging to the eponymous women’s college brings together Cabot, Currier, and Pforzheimer Houses. Twenty feet below Moors Hall in Pforzheimer, three menacing cylindrical boilers provide heat to the Quad houses, the mechanical beating hearts of their own twisting system of hot tunnels.

Just as the Quad tunnels are separate from the extensive tendrils of Harvard’s main network, the Quad itself is widely considered a remote place, fundamentally distinct from the rest of Harvard. It is seen as an “other,” something undesirable to students and perhaps implicitly less worthy of the infrastructure supporting the rest of the College.

Knowingly or not, in the spring of their first year, students trace the path of the central steam tunnels as they complete “River Run” — a ritual meant to protect its participants from the curse of the Quad. And if they are fortunate enough to get a River House, they often spend their next three years opposed to venturing out of the domain of their own heat source.

The current perception of the Quad as less prestigious than the River is intimately tied up with gender and racial bias. The space originally existed as part of Radcliffe College, which was built as a monument to the exclusion of women from Harvard. It was inherently constructed to separate one group from another, and gender divisions continued long after its integration. The only reason the shuttle service was introduced in 1973, for instance, was because male athletes housed in the Quad complained about unequal resources relative to the River Houses — never mind that women had already been making that walk for decades.

After Radcliffe merged with Harvard, the barrier between the two became racialized, as many Black students were often geographically relegated to the fringes of campus life. The randomized housing lottery system was introduced to sweep this issue under the rug, but physical and social barriers between the Quad and the River are still pervasive. The Quad continues to exist as a place of isolation, ridicule, and division.

Beginning the story of Harvard’s tunnels with Radcliffe and the Quad paints a much more nuanced picture of our history. By recognizing the ways in which the Quad is still separate from the main campus, we learn the troubled aspects of our history and enable ourselves to reckon with the past more authentically and rigorously. Students should know why their heat comes from different sources, just as they should be aware of the history of discrimination surrounding the Quad.

We should also be wary of diminishing Radcliffe’s legacy in the name of equity and ignoring the origins of today’s Quad. In the name of integration, Harvard whitewashed its own wrongdoings and invalidated the experiences of many marginalized students.

Though an integrated steam network between The River and The Quad is probably not feasible, we should address the disparate experiences of Quadlings while preserving a connection with Radcliffe in whatever ways we can.

Adam V. Aleksic ’23 is a joint concentrator in Government and Linguistics in Kirkland House. His column “The Harvard Beneath Our Feet” appears on alternate Thursdays.