At Long Last, Housing Day

Out of the many things we lost when we were instructed to vacate campus in March 2020, the loss of Housing Day by just three days is one that is still sorely felt. For many students currently on campus, Housing Day traditions are merely college lore, like whatever it is that goes on in the Stacks or the so-called humor magazine that a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization slides under our doors in the dead of night.

This year, however, marks a long-anticipated shift from the monotony of virtual celebrations and make-up traditions that, despite our best efforts, could never quite live up to pre-pandemic standards: We are having an in-person Housing Day, and we couldn’t be more grateful. On March 10th, we look forward to coming together as a community to celebrate and welcome the Class of 2025 into their new homes.

We know that this Housing Day won’t be identical to the ones prior to the pandemic — not that most of our peers, particularly freshmen, have a helpful reference point to compare to. Amid surging cases in the undergraduate community, the administration has opted for smaller, masked dorm-storming squads of upperclassmen to mitigate Covid-19 risks. Celebrations will be confined to hallways, rather than actual rooms; stormers and new house members will have only five minutes to rejoice inside before being forced to disperse.

But after the pains of our collective departure, the isolation of more than a year away, and the repeated fits and starts of a hopeful but gradual return, these differences represent at worst a minor inconvenience. This coming Thursday has tremendous potential to reinvigorate our community right on the anniversary of its collapse. Yet that potential will remain just that, an unfulfilled possibility, unless we step up and bring it to fruition. It is up to us to make or break this Housing Day.

Granted, the last few years of virtual Housing Day have left us without a sizeable chunk of our institutional memory: details and specifics that graduated along with those upperclassmen who never returned to a full density campus after the first March 1oth. Traditions we always assumed would be passed on organically got lost or distorted in our collective absence, unwitnessed or unknown by our younger cohorts. Campus culture predictably withered without a campus.

Two years down the pandemic road, only students who started among the class of ’22 and before have any tangible sense of what an in-person Housing Day felt like. The rest of us have lived it only through vicarious, digital means, watching old Harvard Youtube vlogs or binging Housing Day videos while doing a virtual river run on Google street view with our scattered blocking groups on Zoom.

But what has been gone is not entirely forgotten— and from what has been lost we are presented with an opportunity.

We often critique our campus culture and all its exclusionary social scenes. This Housing Day, freshmen and upperclassmen alike will receive something less tangible but more valuable than simple house allotments: a chance to act on our concerns and critiques, to change campus for the better. The bottled-up energy of the past few months — the excitement over re-densification, the joys of Harvard-Yale — should be channeled into making this Housing Day a particularly festive and regenerative moment for everyone. One of the rare joys of our sometimes anxiety-inducing, perenially exhausting campus community is precisely its self-renewing character. Our collective togetherness can be constantly redefined and recreated as we see fit, nudging it towards compassion at every step, generation after generation, class after class. Sometimes, the act of maintenance itself is also a repeated act of creation.

Our roles within this community are constantly changing, too. Many of us entered Harvard as newcomers, dazed and eager to take in all that it has to offer; many of us have benefited greatly from the efforts of upperclassmen, specifically House Committee individuals, to make sure that there is at least one community we feel welcome in. Our transition from Boston-stranded strangers to experienced community members may not have gone exactly how we envisioned it, but it is one that has happened and should be acknowledged. We are beyond grateful for the people that have made Harvard home for us — even when extenuating circumstances have made it extremely difficult to do so.

With that in mind: Upperclassmen, take this day as your own too!

Celebrate for all the years you missed and give the first-years the wholesome welcoming that your screen-based reception didn’t provide. Celebrate the growth you have had at Harvard by being a trustworthy upperclassman to the first-years the same way an upperclassman (or their camera-off Zoom avatar) was for you. Pass on the joy — or, lacking any joy to pass after years of stale digital cheers, nourish some to gift the Class of 2025. This Housing Day is a revival as much as it is a debut: We are reviving a beloved tradition, and we are creating one that is unique to our circumstances.

This Thursday morning — or, for the bold running types, this Wednesday night — marks the beginning of a newly promising era. We encourage you to treat it that way. Please, go have plenty of responsible, at-times masked fun. Wear your House colors with pride, cheer loudly, binge Housing Day videos. Lend a shoulder to anyone who gets sorted into the Quad, and make sure to take a shot at getting into a River House — if you know what we mean.

Become the community we all missed.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

Have a suggestion, question, or concern for The Crimson Editorial Board? Click here.