Harvard’s 12 upperclassmen House Committees spent roughly $727,000 during the 2025-26 academic year, paying for everything from elaborate formals and free merchandise to Housing Day celebrations and ice sculptures, according to internal financial documents obtained by The Crimson.

But the cost of House life varied sharply. Currier HoCo reported roughly $72,200 in expenditures, compared with about $40,500 at Dunster. Per-student spending ranged from about $94 to about $194 across HoCos — more than twice as much in one House as another.

Collectively, the committees spent about $63,600 more than they reported bringing in. Eight of the 12 recorded expenses exceeding revenue, though the report does not show their account balances or money carried over from previous years.

Serving as the elected student leadership for each House, HoCos organize formals, weekly socials and other events, and sell merchandise to build House spirit. On average, the committees spent roughly $60,000 last year, or $146 per student.

Formals accounted for more than a third of their combined expenditures. Some HoCos devoted more than half of their budgets to the events, while others spent heavily on merchandise, Housing Day, or smaller gatherings. More than one committee spent thousands of dollars on meals and outings for its own members — including Mather, which in fall 2025 spent roughly $4,450 on itself.

HoCos maintain independent budgets and report to a central committee overseen by the Dean of Students Office. Money raised through the College’s inaugural Housing Day fundraising challenge is not included in HoCo budgets — rather, it goes directly to the Houses.

HoCo budgets were made public in 2014, when the Undergraduate Council — a now-defunct student government body — mandated that HoCos disclose proposed budgets under its bylaws in order to receive UC funding. That requirement stopped applying in 2018, when the College overhauled the structure of student life funding.

The disparities are not new. A 2016 Crimson investigation found that Eliot projected the highest HoCo spending, at $43,350, while Dunster projected the least, at $12,481. A decade later, Eliot again ranked near the top, spending roughly $70,800, while Dunster spent the least at roughly $40,500.

But the range underscores how variety within the House system guarantees a different — and differently financed — social experience for distinct groups of students, even as fundamental traditions remain the same.

The Crimson aggregated documents listing total HoCo reported revenue and spending across the fall 2025 and spring 2026 semesters. (HoCo leadership is elected on a calendar year cycle, and membership turned over between the fall and spring.)

Four members of House Committee leadership confirmed the accuracy of the reported revenue and expenditures for the relevant house and semester. The Crimson reached out to more than 40 current and former HoCo chairs for comment. Most did not respond and three declined to comment.

Ice Sculptures, Ice Rinks

One of the largest expenses for HoCos each year are the House formals. In the winter, Houses hold formals individually or with neighboring Houses. Spring brings another round, including a joint Quad formal, a combined Dunster-Mather formal, and individual events in the other Houses.

The differences were particularly stark in the spring. Eliot spent roughly $30,000 on Fête, its annual spring formal, or about $54 per House resident. Pforzheimer reported spending just $3,000, or roughly $6 per student, on its spring formal.

But that comparison comes with a caveat: Pfoho co-hosted the Quad formal with Cabot and Currier, whose combined expenses brought the event’s total to about $25,000. That amounts to roughly $17 per Quad resident, still less than the $27 per student River House HoCos spent on average.

Eliot’s Fête, known for its elaborate setting and limited guest list, is open only to House residents and one guest each.

Eliot does not sell formal tickets, opting instead to fund social events through annual House dues: $35 for freshmen and $65 for upperclassmen. Dues are optional, though students must pay in order to attend the House’s winter and spring formals.

Held at the Bright-Landry Hockey Center while Eliot underwent renovations, last spring’s Fête featured an ice sculpture of the House, a live band, and a caricature artist.

“You walk in, and you kind of descend upon the ice hockey rink-turned-dance floor with a little stage and the performers,” Hannah E. Murphy ’28 said. “It was very grand.”

Winthrop spent about $29,000 on its spring formal at an upscale downtown Boston hotel — roughly $72 per resident and about half its HoCo’s annual expenditures.

“Winthrop HoCo prides itself on being a student community organization, and therefore spend money on student events,” Mikalah L. Hodge ’27, Winthrop HoCo chair, wrote in an email. “Despite The Crimson’s continuous publication of false and inflammatory contents, we are financially secure and continue to host events for our House.”

“Ultimately, we welcome all students to join HoCo and help make our community amazing,” Hodge added.

Other Houses spent heavily on the details. Lowell’s Bacchanalia featured miniature white horses and a 300-pound ice sculpture, though its HoCo did not separately itemize the formal’s full cost. Adams HoCo opted to dole out $790 this spring for its own ice sculpture, but reported total formal expenses of only about $19 per student.

Aisha A. Olufayo ’28, who attended Adams’ formal, praised the food, along with the live music and the ice sculpture.

“It was pretty great,” Olufayo said. “Randall Courtyard. There was good food. They had Costco cakes.”

Formal ticket sales helped offset the costs, but rarely covered them. Cabot, Winthrop, Leverett, Kirkland, and Quincy each brought in between $3,500 and $10,000 from spring formal ticket revenue last year. Lowell, which charged $20 for most formal tickets, reported more than $21,000 in formal-related revenue. In spring 2025, some HoCo chairs told The Crimson they did not expect to make a profit on formals.

No spring formal brought in enough ticket revenue to cover its cost. (This excludes HoCos that did not itemize their spring formal expenses.)

Not all Houses charge for formals: Eliot does not, Dunster and Mather did not for their shared formal, and Adams opted to make their formal free last year after raising over $100,000 through the Housing Day challenge.

‘I Know Everybody’

Pfoho spent roughly $30,000 on merchandise last year — about $76 per resident and more than any other House. About $22,000 of that spending came in the fall, when the committee bought free Harvard-Yale sweaters for House residents.

Pfoho HoCo chair Sarah Bellagat ’27 said the sweaters helped explain why the committee spent nearly $14,000 more than it earned over the year.

“I believe that mostly comes from us doing free Harvard-Yale merch last year for everyone in Pfoho (it was a red sweater with an image of a polar bear on a football field, very cute imo! I still keep mine haha),” Bellagat wrote in an email.

“Everyone in the House loved it, and it was a great way to show pfride, so it was definitely a huge win for us,” she added.

Other HoCos also spent substantially more on merchandise than they made back in sales. Of the committees that reported itemized spending and revenue on merch, none recouped what they spent.

Housing Day, when upperclassmen rush into freshmen dorms to announce House assignments, was another major expense, though spending varied widely. Currier spent about $10,200, or $20 per current and incoming House resident. Eliot reported just over $1,000, or about $2 per student.

Some of that spending came before Housing Day itself. Cabot reported paying $650 to produce a Housing Day hype video, though most HoCos did not list video production as a separate expense.

In addition to large semesterly or annual events, HoCos also dedicate significant portions of their budgets to smaller socials that take place on a weekly to monthly basis — variously, Steins, Carpes, Festas, or Happy Hours, depending on the House — in addition to sporadic food drops.

HoCos that reported itemized spending on regular socials and food drops spent an average of roughly $7,300 annually on those smaller gatherings, or about $17.50 per student. Currier spent roughly $46 per resident; Dunster spent about $6.

Samson A. Axelrod ’28, a Currier resident and the House’s intramural sports representative, said the regular food drops helped him get to know other students.

“I feel like I know everybody in my house because at some point you’re going to be studying in there, and then they’re going to call ‘food drop,’” Axelrod said. “And everybody swarms the dhall.”

Sophie Tung ’29 said Adams’ weekly Thursday night Carpe events had been her main introduction to the House.

“There was like one that was called Golden-pe, and we had fried chicken, just a lot of golden food. It was super cute,” she said. “We also had Apple-pe night, and we had apple pie. We had really, really high quality apples.”

More spending did not necessarily mean happier results. Dunster, which spent the least overall, was among the Houses with the highest student satisfaction rates in The Crimson’s 2026 senior survey, alongside Lowell and Leverett.

Meals, Meetings, and Bonding

Some committees also spent thousands of dollars on their own members. Eight of the 12 HoCos reported expenses for committee meals, meetings, outings, or bonding activities, most of them in the fall.

Mather reported the most, spending roughly $4,900 over the year, including $4,450 in fall 2025. That semester’s expenses included $2,500 for HoCo bonding event and nearly $1,950 for meeting food.

With about 11 members on the committee, Mather’s fall spending came to roughly $400 per HoCo member. In that same semester, the committee spent about $14,700 on expenses outside its own meetings and outings, or roughly $33 per House resident.

Mather’s spending on its members fell sharply in the spring, when it reported about $470 in meeting expenses. HoCos elect new leadership each calendar year.

Leverett reported the next-highest internal spending, at about $2,400, including two board dinners, and a $921.80 outing. Cabot, Currier, Kirkland, and Winthrop did not report identifiable expenditures for committee meals, outings, or similar activities.

According to a separate internal policy document obtained by The Crimson, HoCos are responsible for managing their own finances, though resident deans or designated staff are required to review budgets “regularly.” Committee members are further advised to meet with staff twice per semester to review financial accounts.

A College spokesperson declined to respond to a request for comment on the oversight HoCos receive regarding their budgets.

‘Analogous Experiences’

The committees brought in a combined $663,050 last year, averaging about $55,300 each. But that revenue did not keep pace with expenditures in most Houses.

Only four HoCos — Dunster, Kirkland, Lowell, and Currier — reported revenue exceeding expenses. The gap topped $10,000 in Adams, Pfoho, Mather, and Cabot, which spent about $16,500 more than it earned, the largest difference of any HoCo. (The figures do not establish how much money the committee had left at year’s end, so do not indicate whether any HoCos ended the year in a financial deficit.)

Cabot’s overall revenue was close to the average, at about $54,300, or $149 per student. Its high expenditures were driven in part by above-average spending on formals — though some of those payments were for events held in previous years.

Overall, Cabot HoCo spent roughly $35,000 on formals across both semesters, split between payments for this year’s events and reimbursements to Pfoho and Currier HoCos for previous ones. Excluding those carryover payments, Cabot’s expenditures exceeded its revenue by roughly $5,500.

Currier, meanwhile, reported the highest revenue of any HoCo, at roughly $73,300 — including more than $14,000 in recorded reimbursement from other HoCos for the spring 2025 Quad formal.

The HoCos that spent the most in 2025-26 also tended to be those with the highest revenues: Kirkland, Currier, and Eliot all ranked among the top five on both metrics. Like spending, revenue varied widely, ranging from roughly $187 per student for Kirkland to about $83 per student for Mather.

Mather HoCo reported the least revenue of any committee: about $36,500 total, or roughly $83 per capita. Ninety percent of its reported revenue came from the Student Activities Fee or laundry fees; its only other revenue streams were merchandise sales in the fall and Mather Lather in the spring. Mather reported no revenue from its spring formal, jointly hosted with Dunster HoCo.

Overall, Mather ended the year having spent about $15,500 more than it earned.

Last year, HoCo revenue came largely from four sources: the Student Activities Fee, laundry fees, merchandise sales, and event tickets. Almost every committee reported receiving a $9,000 Student Activities Fee allocation in the fall, and most reported another $9,000 in the spring.

Not all funding was available for HoCos to spend at their discretion. The Dean of Students Office awarded Currier, Quincy, Winthrop, and Leverett $5,000 apiece to host neighborhood block parties during Yardfest, but the funds were restricted to that purpose.

Last year also saw the College usher in a series of changes to the ways Houses can earn revenue, spearheaded by new College Dean David J. Deming, who previously served as faculty dean of Kirkland House.

In November 2025, Deming announced that laundry would be made free to all students — pairing the move with a $250 increase to the Student Activities Fee, which was also made mandatory.

The shift has direct implications for HoCo budgets, eliminating one major revenue stream while increasing another.

Laundry brought in roughly $187,000 in revenue for HoCos last year. This year, it will bring in none.

At the same time, the Student Activities Fee funding for Houses has risen more than 80 percent — an increase that will be largely offset by the loss of laundry revenue. Assuming laundry would have brought in roughly the same amount of revenue this year as last year, the anticipated 2026-27 budget is only six percent higher than it would have been before the change.

Olufayo, the Adams resident, said that despite variations in House programming, students’ experiences were broadly similar.

“I feel like they try really hard to give us analogous experiences,” she said. “It’s a little bit different depending on the traditions, but I don’t think someone’s missing out on something.”

—Staff writer Sebastian B. Connolly can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at sbc.23. Follow him on X @SebastianC4784.

—Staff writer Summer E. Rose can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at ser.85. Follow her on X @summerellenrose.