This Visitas, Let Academics Take the Stage

Harvard students are students first — so prospective students shouldn’t see our academics last.

Visitas — the College’s hallmark admitted students weekend — boasts roughly two hundred official events to expose prospective students to the broader Harvard community. But there’s one problem: Visitas focuses primarily on extracurriculars and clubs, not academics — even amidst Harvard’s renewed push to recenter academics.

If Harvard is serious about making classes the core of the student experience, the College should wear its academic identity on its sleeve — and prospective students should be prepared to engage in kind.

Over the past year, Harvard has pushed to recenter academics in response to disengagement from students and rising grade inflation. Proposals have included a cap on A grades, discouragement of technology in class, and more stringent attendance policies. Spending time on extracurriculars has fallen out of vogue.

Evidently, Visitas didn’t get the message.

This weekend’s programming features dozens of official extracurricular events — and surely more unofficial ones. Many flashy club events overlap with academic programming, requiring students to choose early where their priorities lie.

Should they attend Harvard Political Review’s “Pastries and Politics” or watch University President Alan M. Garber ’76 give his welcome address? Hear from premier faculty members at “Visitas Thinks Big,” meet fellow rural students, attend a Radcliffe Pitches rehearsal, or play trivia with the Harvard Undergraduate Women in Law Association?

While offering so many different opportunities for students to sample has the benefit of showcasing the many communities that make Harvard feel like home, it grossly misrepresents day-to-day undergraduate life — which typically puts classes front and center.

While there are previews of academic life on the first day of programming for those who seek them, actually attending classes — what students should spend most of their time doing — takes a backseat until Monday, the day that many students leave. By then, I’d wager many students are already disengaged, whether focusing on nursing their first hangover or coffee chatting their way into the Harvard Undergraduate Consulting Group.

The inappropriate imbalance of academic and extracurricular introductions to Harvard is in part forced by Visitas’s timing of Sunday through Monday. Extracurricular activities often fall on weekends, when students are out of class, so it seems only natural to give prospective students a taste of the balance between academic and leisure time. Why does the main day of an event — one ostensibly about education — fall on a day with no classes?

As a result, pre-frosh view Harvard through rose-tinted glasses, experiencing the calm without the storm.

Though I am loath to admit it, perhaps Harvard should take a hint from our (inferior) peer institution in New Haven, whose freshmen preview offers a more accurate representation of student life. “Bulldog Days,” Yale University’s admitted students event, spans Monday to Wednesday, with primarily academic forums and student life panels during the day and extracurricular opportunities in the evening.

Clearly, Visitas could be better. But for now, the burden falls on admitted students to get a more accurate, unvarnished taste of undergraduate life at Harvard — and see if our academic community is the right fit for them.

Last fall, I wrote that potential applicants to Harvard need not fear campus speech culture, but should only apply if they are prepared to commit to the work of improving open discourse.

Now, I extend a similar call.

Harvard’s speech culture may no longer be on five-alarm fire, but the debate over academic rigor rages on. Whatever you may hear this weekend about grade caps and increasing academic rigor, know that upperclassmen’s fear of the A-minus or B+ means that Harvard is working hard to make your undergraduate academic experience more valuable. Know that this work will make your degree that much more meaningful.

But that meaning will require your investment. This weekend, try not to get swept up in the glut of free sweets that clubs dangle your way. Explore different department open houses. Take notes at lectures with the rest of us. For a few hours, give yourself a true taste of what it feels like to study at Harvard.

Harvard is a school. Why pretend otherwise?

Victoria L. Dolan ’28, an Associate Editorial Editor, is a History & Literature concentrator in Kirkland House.