Give Us Some Space

Students unsatisfied with campus social life often take aim at the administration for failing to create an inclusive, high-quality social experience for them. Yet many other students, and even one ex-Dean of the College, have complained that administrators have taken a heavy-handed approach to regulating social life on campus. Paradoxically, it appears that for many Harvard either veers towards encroaching upon or overlooking the realm of student life.

Two recent developments betoken answers to these concerns: Adams House has introduced a new, dedicated party space, and new Dean of Students Katherine G. O’Dair has expressed a desire to take a more hands-off approach to shaping Harvard’s student experience. We appreciate both of these strategies to improve social life on campus, and hope that Harvard can find a middle ground between micromanaging students’ social life and neglecting their need for better resources.

Harvard lacks modern, inclusive spaces on campus where students can gather and throw parties. Social spaces already available to students are outdated and overbooked. Many of the campus’s large parties are hosted in dorm rooms, which is symptomatic of both the scarcity and inadequacy of current social outlets. If new spaces like the one recently opened by Adams House are to provide students with opportunities to socialize on campus, they must be comfortable, spacious, and inviting.

If students find Harvard’s on-campus spaces lacking, they have no shortage of alternatives. Many go to Final Clubs and other off-campus spaces to take advantage the ample space and attractive environment they cannot find elsewhere. Administrators, in turn, have expressed a desire to coax students away from off-campus spaces and bring them back to Harvard proper, but have not yet created an appropriate set of incentives. If they are serious about keeping students on campus, they ought to follow the lead set by Adams House and actually give students spaces they can make their own.

This is not to say administrators should micromanage students’ social lives. While it remains to be seen exactly how Dean O’Dair envisions implementing her “hands-off” vision in her new role, we hope that she chooses to empower students to create a social scene on campus that they actually want. A prime example of a successful student-created social experience is the [BLANK] party, which brought together a cross-section of the student body. It proved that students are not just capable of designing their own on-campus social experiences, but can excel at doing so.

We hope that these recent announcements portend a happy medium on campus where students have access to a variety of attractive social options and are also empowered with the social spontaneity that no top-down plan can replicate. The university has been bogged down in the social space debate for at least a year now. Even though it has been a divisive issue on campus, a refrain has bridged all sides of the debate—that the administration has not adequately addressed student concerns.