What Harvard Can Learn from the Science Center Girl Scouts

Following a fatal shooting at Brown University last December, Harvard announced that it would be limiting access to all Faculty of Arts and Sciences buildings to Harvard ID holders. Then, in late January, the University reiterated its commitment to swipe-only access for FAS buildings through the spring semester.

Recently, however, administrators apparently walked back the swipe-only access scheme, claiming that the measure was “not feasible” to enforce. I should know: just last week, I purchased a box of Girl Scouts Thin Mints in the Science Center lobby, and the two girls selling them seemed far too young to possess an HUID.

Many students have since affirmed that Harvard’s reneging on its closed-door program makes them feel “vulnerable” and “uncomfortable.” But Harvard would be wrong to close its doors. The Girl Scouts in the Science Center epitomize why FAS buildings like the Science Center should remain open to the public.

The town-gown divide is almost inevitable for any college situated in a community. However, the “Harvard bubble” — the tendency to remain within the confines of Harvard’s campus and a handful of surrounding buildings or restaurants — is especially acute. Students are aware of the bubble, though: Every couple of years, a member of the Editorial Board or student body takes to the written word to exhort his fellow students to throw themselves out into the greater Cambridge or Boston area.

There’s certainly value in leaving Harvard Square, but it’s wrong to think that, to break the Harvard bubble, one needs to venture outside of Harvard’s campus. The fact of the matter is that campus is rife with members of the local community and tourists who use our facilities and exist in our spaces, whether they be our pathways, tables, or restrooms.

The Girl Scouts in the Science Center are an ideal example of this. They represent the sort of constant, natural interchange with the broader Cambridge community that Harvard students ought not only to appreciate, but to strive for, too: one where students at the University are reminded of the world and people beyond it, and where some of this nation’s ambitious minds — Girl Scouts or otherwise — are granted a glimpse of the spaces and people that many hope will become their future.

There’s something worthwhile even to the commercial element of the Girl Scouts’s presence. To buy from them, at a fundamental level, is to support local community members in an area of Cambridge that is increasingly populated by more expensive chains. This is not to say that the Science Center lobby should become a bazaar, but rather that when not fostering new connections, open FAS buildings can also bring the world to Harvard in facilitating the public’s work — whether that’s providing a table for someone to study or take a meeting, or a bathroom mirror in which to freshen up on the way to an interview.

Above all, their presence exemplifies that the Harvard bubble, geographically speaking, is far less alienating or impregnable than it’s made out to be — but we need to let people in the doors for that to be true.

Naturally, there are safety concerns that come with the opening of buildings, primarily that bad actors will exploit access to Harvard spaces to harm students. Nevertheless, in an article earlier this month, two fellow editors outlined strategies to provide more security for Harvard spaces without committing to swipe-only entry — most compellingly by increasing the number of security guards around campus.

It’s also fair to wonder about tourist and public culture and safety more broadly. Instances of theft have occurred in the past, and certain tourists are inevitably annoying. Some might pushily ask you how you got into Harvard; others might piggyback off your swipe to get into certain buildings.

Yet theft often targets first-year dorms, which are rightly unaffected by the HUID policy debate. What’s more, the issue of obnoxious or overstepping tourists is perennial — locking a few more buildings isn’t going to change that. The overeager won’t be dissuaded by having to ensnare students in an interrogation outdoors or waiting for someone to unintentionally swipe them in.

What swipe-only access would certainly accomplish, though, is further alienating Harvard from the immediate world around it. Rather than lock the world out, we would shut ourselves in.

Instead, we need to continue to let the Girl Scouts, the public, inside — and not just to sate my appetite for Thin Mints.

Jackson H. Barr ’29, a Crimson Editorial Editor, lives in Canaday Hall.