Bunking with Nancy

When champion figure skaters came into Cambridge last week for the 33rd annual Evening with Champions exhibition, the Fluffy Committee got busy.

Members of this fluffy-by-nature-as-well-as-name institution, a subcommittee of the Eliot House-sponsored Evening With Champions charity organization, put out what amounts to a Dorm Crew for the stars.

These students are in the business of serious pillow fluffing as they transform ordinary Eliot dorm rooms into the lodging of champions. To make that giant leap, committee members coerce volunteer hosts into neatening up their river-view suites (such a view is required before one can even be considered as a potential bed-offerer), arrange for Harvard Student Agencies to provide sparkling clean linens, and even organize the baking of homemade cookies (oatmeal chocolate chip this year) so that the skaters can go to sleep with stomachs well-fed as well as pillows well-fluffed. By the end of the procedure, says EWC executive Matthew L. Butler ’04, “It’s like a five-star hotel, except it’s Eliot House.”

Although the Evening With Champions attracts high-powered stars, not all of the skating gods sleep on the mattresses of mere Harvard mortals. Nancy Kerrigan stayed elsewhere. So did Paul Wylie ’90, who apparently had enough of Eliot House after three years spent there as a student at Harvard.

The champions who do stay with students appreciate the personal treatment they receive. “It’s so much better than a hotel,” raves Tanith Belbin, who, with her pairs partner Benjamin Agosto, won a silver medal at the U.S. Nationals this year.

EWC co-chair Heather M. Langdon ’03 was one of at least a dozen students who gave up dorm space so the champions could get some beauty rest Harvard-style. Langdon says living with her resident skating star was just like living as usual, “except her toothpaste was in my medicine cabinet.”

Belbin, who shacked up with Langdon, said after her performance last Saturday night that this year’s quarters exceeded last year’s in comfort. What’s so much better? This year the students remembered to clear away the stack of Maxim magazines from their easy-access, right-next-to-the-toilet position before the champion arrived.