As Students Sit Midterms on Housing Day, UC Aims for Change

As students sit exams Thursday while freshmen celebrate their upperclassman housing assignments, Undergraduate Council leaders hope to reschedule Housing Day to avoid conflicting with midterms next year.

Some students complain that scheduled exams on Housing Day—which typically falls on the Thursday before spring break—take away from House spirit, but professors say they hold midterms then because it falls during a natural time in the semester to give exams.

By Christine E Mansour

Astronomy professor Robert P. Kirshner ’70, whose midterm for Science of the Physical Universe 19: “The Energetic Universe” is Thursday, held the midterm the week before Housing Day last year but said that he did not find the results satisfactory.

“My preference was to have it this week, because I thought we’d have covered more stuff,” Kirshner said. “I understand the high-spirited fun—I have a bunch of T-shirts to prove it—[but] there has to be some balance, and it’s a little bit tricky to know where it is."

Like Kirshner, Psychology professor Steven Pinker also planned his Science of Living Systems 20: “Psychological Science” midterm for Housing Day because the day falls mid-semester. “It was the logical time for the exam—halfway through the semester, and just before spring break,” Pinker wrote in an email.

Kirshner said Housing Day’s proximity to spring break leaves professors “caught in this scheduling bind.”

To address that scheduling conflict, Undergraduate Council President Ava Nasrollahzadeh '16 and Vice President Dhruv P. Goyal '16—who campaigned last fall on a call to end midterms on Housing Day—are in the process of creating a proposal to push Housing Day to the Friday before spring break, rather than Thursday.

“Housing Day is one of those very few days of the year...where the entire community gets together,” Goyal said. If students are not able to participate in delivering or receiving House letters, attending House lunches and welcome events, or meeting with fellow Housemates, they will not be included in that community, he said.

Nasrollahzadeh, for her part, said taking a midterm while other students celebrate is “like having an exam in the middle of a party.”

Nasrollahzadeh and Goyal said they hope to propose a solution that will satisfy both professors’ scheduling concerns and undergraduates’ desire to participate in Housing Day activities. The pair said they hope their proposal will gain administrative support and be implemented by next year’s Housing Day.

Still, Nasrollahzadeh and Goyal said the plan is not without flaws. Some students, especially athletes, leave campus earlier than Friday for spring break, Goyal said. However, he added that he still thinks this change would allow more students to participate.

After taking the proposal to administrators and soliciting faculty comment this spring, Goyal and Nasrollahzadeh will put it before the UC during the first or second general meeting after spring break.

In the meantime, midterms go on this Housing Day. Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris emphasizes that academics should come first. He added that while House communities are “vital to College life,” Housing Day is not the only opportunity to engage in House-related activities.

“Housing Day is a piece–one piece–of integrating students into that community. It’s an important piece...but, as with everything academics, come first,” he said.

Still, not all professors who scheduled their midterms for Housing Day did so knowingly. Harvard Kennedy School professor Matthew A. Baum, whose class Government 1793: “Media, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy” originally was scheduled to have a midterm on Housing Day, moved the exam to after spring break because snow days earlier in the semester interrupted his course schedule.

He said that, regardless, he did not know about Housing Day because he is used to teaching Kennedy School students, not undergraduates.

“In my eight plus years, this is the first time I’ve heard of Housing Day,” Baum said. “It wasn’t a sacred date for any particular reason.”

—Staff writer Melissa C. Rodman can be reached at melissa.rodman@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @melissa_rodman.