Why Don’t Harvard Students Show Up?

The poor weather at this year’s Yardfest wasn’t solely to blame for the low attendance. Nor was Ravyn Lenae. It was the students.

The Harvard College Events Board, Harvard Undergraduate Association, and Harvard College Student Engagement Office all publicize frequent events open to undergrads. But in my experience, such events are chronically under-attended. It’s time for Harvard students to reflect on their apparent apathy toward College-run programming. The problem lies not — or at least, not entirely — with the organizers of these events, but with the students who immediately disengage. We’re suffering from lack of buy-in.

The College certainly goes to great lengths to publicize its programming. Various Harvard offices send students countless emails each month about gatherings from a class ring event with the HUA to the Dean of Students Office Leadership Awards Reception; yet we tend to scroll past them with lightning speed.

I rarely hear of students going to College-led events. Many of my peers declined to even go to Yardfest — a free performance featuring a headliner whose top hit has been streamed over one billion times. School sponsored events have long been plagued by issues of low turnout — whether last year’s Class Committee events for seniors, College-hosted Queen’s Head parties, or the biannual school-sponsored Harvard-Yale tailgate.

Something deeper is afoot. Why are Harvard students so opposed to CEB festivals, to HUA socials? It’s not a quality problem. It’s a branding problem. Harvard students implicitly label College-run events as “lame.” The moment something smacks of administrative planning, we write it off.

Students might say College programming simply isn’t enticing enough to lure them out of Lamont. Harvard students love to complain. They are always lamenting something: the food, school spirit, grade deflation. As I walk around campus, I hear classmates offering plenty of ideas for what they’d like to see changed. You would never guess it, but there are myriad pathways for us to provide feedback. Unfortunately, students don’t seem to be utilizing them.

During HUA campaign season a few weeks ago, candidates promised a litany of changes. One stuck out to me: creating a Google Form to hear feedback. And they’re far from the only ones soliciting student input. The Harvard College Weekly Updates include feedback forms in many of their emails, and student thoughts were solicited over email for Yardfest this year.

But who among us can honestly say they fill out those surveys? I can already envision the emails, sliding straight to the trash in my and my classmates’ inboxes. Students are not investing in what they want to change.

Harvard students like to suggest that they have no time, and that’s partly true. So caught up in the next to-do list, the upcoming assignment, the club meeting — we lack the will, or maybe the energy, to fill out that five-minute survey or to go to an (admittedly sparse) event.

And yet, for events that we care about, people show up. In fact, Harvard is a place where students engage a lot. Shabbat 1000, an annual shabbat dinner for both Jewish and non-Jewish affiliates drew more than 1,000 people last year. And Eleganza, an annual student-led show which took place just a few weekends ago, has regularly attracted over 1,500 attendees since its founding in 1994. So why not College-run socials?

The solution requires a real culture shift; it requires a break from the apathy I see now. We need to rethink our approach. It is time to reinvest in College life: show up when an event seems worthwhile and speak up when it doesn’t.

The cure for this lies not in Harvard nor any of its aforementioned offices, but in the students who dismiss anything the College is involved in. And I worry that we may be missing out.

Elana M. Farbiarz ’29, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Thayer Hall.