Harvard undergraduates received disappointing news on Feb. 10. Our student government representatives sent an email after a meeting with the Committee on Student Life, writing that “due to the constraints of the pandemic, Housing Day will not operate the same way as it has in the past.”
Housing Day is one of Harvard’s unique traditions, a day when campus comes alive.
Sophomores, juniors and seniors storm freshman dormitories to tell first-year students which of the 12 “houses,” essentially big dorms for upperclassmen, they will live in for their remaining time on campus. Having lost two of these days during the 17 months that Harvard sent us home, I was excited to participate in one more traditional Housing Day my senior year. Instead, the student government said it would likely be a modified outdoor event. When I inquired about this to Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana, he was polite and warm but told me he couldn’t provide more specifics or predict what the event might look like.
I still feel we’ve been cheated. This decision is the latest in a long list of Covid-related excesses. Harvard has required students to get vaccinated and boosted and test for Covid twice a week, hectored us to wear masks nearly everywhere, and banned students from several communal spaces, including dining halls at one point, and from having informal campus gatherings indoors with more than 10 people. Most of my classmates lost nearly a third of their time on campus. The aggregate burden of these measures over two years—combined with the discouraging realization that many of them do little to protect public health—has diminished our college experience.
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