ICYMI: Harvard Thinks Reading Chaucer Together is Lit

You ever have one of those days when you can’t quite tell if something is satire or not? That’s what we’re going through right now. Normally you can check the source’s url—if it’s the Onion or some other funny-sounding publication, you can write it off as a joke and move on. But what happens when the source is the most prestigious university in the world?

Chaucer wants to party. Do you let him in? By Wikimedia Commons

In case you missed it, the College’s Implementation Committee for the Policy on Membership in Single Gender Social Organizations (oh god we’re never writing that again) released its recommendations today. If you’re looking for a brief rundown of what’s in their report, check out this article from our main site. If you’re looking for a laugh, look no further:

“We recommend that the College undertake a three-year pilot program of inter-house dining societies, followed by an assessment...Here is how the program as a whole could work. Each society would be “adopted” or hosted by (generally) pairs of Houses, ideally with contrasting physical amenities. Each society would then meet (generally) weekly for a group meal in one or the other of its two host Houses (generally rotating between them)... Societies might set special themes for some of their meals, purchase special desserts, invite special guests, eat in elegant attire, read Chaucer out loud, or anything else they enjoy.”

That has to be satire, right? We have definitely never been to a party where someone has been like “you know what this rager needs? Some English lit from the Middle Ages.”

That is not lit. Just ask Princeton.

Best response to the news so far? Someone in the comments section on the Crimson’s article about the report wrote that the members of the committee are “detached from all reality, or perhaps hostages desperately signaling for help.”

Don’t worry, folks! We’ll come save you from that good old ivory tower and invite you to a real party sometime soon. You have to promise to leave your Shakespeare anthologies at home.

But in all seriousness, please tell us the College just "Kesh'd" us. This can't be real.