Good Friday Is No Day for Housing Day

Housing Day 2025 fell during Ramadan and on Purim. Is Harvard now vying for the Abrahamic hat trick in 2027?

Harvard College administrators are weighing whether to have Housing Day 2027 on the same day as Good Friday, a major and solemn Christian holiday commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Dean of Students Thomas G. Dunne solicited feedback from House staff and student groups, facing meaningful pushback by the student-run House Committees, yet reportedly little by the leadership of the Harvard Catholic Center.

Housing Day belongs to students. The College should work with student representatives to choose the date allowing the greatest number of them to participate.

Housing Day is a singular Harvard experience. For freshmen, it is their first introduction to the House communities they will inhabit for the next three years, and for upperclassmen, one of the rare mornings Harvard feels most joyful. Its value comes from having as many students able to participate as possible.

Holding it on Good Friday would unnecessarily exclude a large swath of our peers. Good Friday is a solemn day of mourning, often marked by fasting, prayer, and attending religious services — it is understandable why some Christian students would feel conflicted about breaking down doors, banging drums, and chanting “C-A-B-O-T” that day.

Sure, religious belief sometimes requires sacrifice, but that doesn’t mean Harvard needs to needlessly increase the number of students forced to choose between practicing their faith and taking part in one of the College’s defining traditions.

Avoiding that choice requires hearing from more than one corner of Harvard’s Christian community. In light of the apparently marginal pushback by the Catholic Center, we’d like to emphasize that no organization can speak for every Christian student.

HoCo chairs cannot represent every student either, but they span all 12 Houses, know what Housing Day is like, and are positioned to hear how a proposed date would affect their peers. They should have a leading voice in the decision.

After several tumultuous years for religious life at Harvard — and commitments to strengthen religious pluralism — the College has a remarkably easy opportunity to practice what it preaches.

Nor should avoiding religious conflicts mean reviving the academic ones that prompted last year’s scheduling change. Faculty should treat Housing Day as one of the few major College events it needs to avoid scheduling exams during. Faculty can move their midterms, but students cannot reschedule Good Friday.

This year, the College should heed HoCo chairs’ pushback and select a date with fewer conflicts for students. A perfect, conflict-free date may not exist — but a plainly better one likely does.

In future years, administrators should present feasible options to HoCo chairs and relevant student religious groups, assess which conflicts would affect the most students, and choose accordingly.

Housing Day is for sorting freshmen into Houses — not sorting observant students out of the celebration.

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.

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