There is a very specific lie that first-years tell in March: “Honestly, I’d be happy anywhere.”

What a beautiful sentiment! What a mature outlook! It’s genuinely admirable to rise above the petty tribalism that sweeps across this campus every spring and understand that a House is — at its core — the place where you eat, sleep, and cry between all the classes, office hours, and extracurricular events you really care about.

It’s a shame, then, that I haven’t met anyone who ever held onto that belief.

As the annual geopolitical realignment event known as “Housing Day” approaches, a certain mania emerges amongst the student population. First-years who, just weeks ago, couldn’t confidently point out Eliot on a map are suddenly discussing tactics to get placed there with the intensity of generals during a war. Suddenly, everyone has an opinion on room sizes, dhall quality, House facilities, and whether living in the Quad promotes healthy work-life boundaries or is tantamount to exile. Some hope to “game the system,” while others turn to faith.

It’s all absurd, and it doesn’t get any better with time. It takes roughly 12 hours for an uninvested first-year to become a full-time spokesperson for the House, which was ranked at the bottom of their mental list. One minute, you’re getting jumpscared by a senior in a discount animal mascot suit, and the next, you’re wearing the ugliest free shirt in the history of free shirts and chanting the name of a House whose correct pronunciation you learned three minutes ago. By dinner, “you” has become “we,” and the week after, you’re ready to defend your House with your life.

By the time you’re an upperclassman like me, you drink the Kool-Aid by the gallon. Observant first-year students may have noticed the steady rise in patriotic rhetoric from upperclassmen in the past month, otherwise known as the annual Sidechat propaganda bonanza. For the past few days, discourse regarding which Houses are overrated, inconveniently located, stinky, ugly, pest-infested, or simply unserious has probably been unavoidable (and conflicting).

What might baffle first-years is that we’re never being ironic — our actions stem from the deep, genuine love we have for the building complexes we were randomly assigned to. Frankly, it shouldn’t be surprising that a bunch of neurotic twenty-somethings prone to overcommitment recreate 19th-century nationalism from first principles when you give them a mascot, a color palette, and free stuff. For an institution that’s so old and overstuffed with traditions and acronyms and opportunities, it’s nice to have a straightforward anchor—no matter how silly. Your House gives you a courtyard to romanticize, a dhall to defend, a mascot to pretend is cool, and a ready-made enemy in whichever House made one too many jokes about the maintenance issue du jour.

That is why people who spend all year clowning House pride somehow become insufferable the second anyone insults their own. You are permitted to complain every day about your walk, but if a first-year says they hope they do not get your House, you must act as if they have slandered your family name. How dare they! *cue dramatic gasp* You may describe your House as labyrinthine, falling apart, socially confusing, or run by a Housing Committee with unresolved interpersonal issues. But the moment another House even raises an eyebrow, it becomes a historic institution full of unparalleled charm and irreplaceable community. Criticism from within is nuanced self-reflection; criticism from without is an act of war.

So, to the first-years currently insisting they are above House nationalism, please enjoy these final hours of neutrality. Enjoy being a free thinker. Enjoy evaluating the Houses with a modicum of self-professed rationality.

Because once you open that Housing Day letter, it is over.

You will become unbearable.

You will acquire enemies you did not ask for.

You will defend an objectively mediocre building complex with your life.

And you will love it.