Our State Fair is a Great State Fair

Replete with a mechanical bull, dunk tank, cow-milking, and pie-eating, last Friday’s Harvard State Fair was a resounding success. We applaud the Office of the Dean, and particularly the duo of Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin II and Campus Life Fellow Justin H. Haan ’05 who planned the event, for a job well done.

The College reported that between 5,500 and 6,000 students, Faculty, and staff came to Tercentenary Theatre in a three hour time-frame—numbers usually seen only in front of Widener Library for commencement. And the buzz on campus indicates that a good time was had by all, whether it involved dunking a dean (or Crimson President) or watching friends fall off the bucking mechanical bull.

But more important than the fair itself is the precedent it sets for the future. Aside from the Harvard-Yale tailgate and some concerts, few campus-wide events have been able to assemble such a sizable group of students. In the past, we have called on the Undergraduate Council (UC) and Office of the Dean to do a better job in this area, and the results have been mixed. But this is just what we have been looking for.

The Harvard State Fair shows that highly successful events can be a reality, and it will serve as a blueprint for the future—both in terms of what to do and what not to do. We hope that the Office of the Dean keeps up its progress, and we urge the UC to follow suit.

In particular, closing all but two of the campus’ dining halls turned out to be quite effective in encouraging attendance. Although some students may have grumbled that they didn’t have food nearby when they had work to do, the two dining halls that remained open should have been more than enough to satisfy their appetites (and, we are dubious of the idea that many students had much work during shopping period). More importantly, by closing the dining halls, students who might not normally go to something like the Harvard State Fair went out and wound up having a ball. By breaking traditional prejudices against carnivals, concerts, and parties, closing dining halls may well have opened up the doors for future events in addition to adding to the fair’s success.

And, most impressively, the event was financed purely with money saved by moving registration and study cards online. We have already commended the Office of the Registrar for a job well done with online registration. The fact that the reduction in costs could finance something like the State Fair is icing on the cake. We hope that the College continues to be innovative in finding money for events that unite the Harvard community.

So what more can we want? Aside from more games at the fair, there seemed to be one thing at the top of everyone’s list that would make even the mechanical bull seem unexciting: University President Lawrence H. Summers in the dunk tank. We know we’ll be at the front of the line for that one.