First-Years, Parents Descend on Yard

Belmont native Zdenka M. Sturm ’06, was no stranger to Harvard Square when she arrived Saturday morning to move into her first-year dorm room.

But that did not make her journey from the Crimson Key tent in Harvard Yard, where she picked up her key, to her new home in Canaday C-5 any less foreign.

As one of the first of roughly 1600 members of the Class of ’06 (officially in Harvard parlance “ought six”) to arrive, Strum walked nervously down a path through Tercentenary Theater toward Canaday Hall.

Bewildered first-years and their parents filled the Yard on Saturday and Sunday, as they unloaded minivans piled high with boxes and suitcases.

Sturm said she had been pleasantly surprised that her family only had to make one trip from home with their sedan.

But the five flights of stairs between the ground and Sturm’s room soon made her family forget the rest of their trip’s efficiency.

“There’s no elevator?” she lamented.

Sturm and her brother, who had attended the University of Massachusetts, discussed the lack of cable in Harvard dorm rooms as they trudged upstairs juggling a tennis racquet, a gold lamp, posters and a multi-colored bed spread.

Sturm found only traces of a moved-in roommate—one of four she had chatted with online—upon opening her room door.

Outside the Yard, roommates Ryan Thornton ’06 and Christopher Chin ’06 were walking into Apley Court for the first time.

As Chin’s father looked on with a video camera, Chin and Thornton agreed to split their two-room suite into two single rooms. They also delighted in the suite’s walk-in closet and marble-decorated bathroom.

“When I went to college way back when we had one room this size for the two of us,” said Cindy Bero, Thornton’s aunt.

But not every student’s parents were so caught up in the moment.

Sitting on the rear bumper of her Jeep, Karen Byrns said she was just glad to finally get her son Corey’s “stuff out of her house.”

Along with piles of clothes, the Byrns’ Jeep held a flat screen television and computer equipment.

“When he sets it all up there’s going to be a blackout tonight,” Karen Byrns quipped.

At nearby Matthews Hall, Nick Cetrulo ’06 was coping with his first housing problem.

After moving in on Friday, Cetrulo discovered that a second floor bathroom had changed from a men’s bathroom to a women’s bathroom overnight.

His proctor, Meggie Crnic, assured him that the confusion would soon be a cleared up.

“Beginnings are always exciting,” Crnic said. “There’s just like a mystique today.”

—Staff writer Anne K. Kofol can be reached at kofol@fas.harvard.edu

—David H. Gellis contributed to the reporting of this story.