Cliff Dwellers and Yard Pests

Last spring, 130 rising sophomores were assigned to one of their bottom three housing choices--most of which were in the Radcliffe Quad. The assignments provoked anger, petitions, and threats to withhold payment for room and board--they started a grassroots movement to change the whole system. As one angry freshman remarked, "The housing system is a failure and the University is trying to make us pay for their mistakes."

Freshmen this year will not have the chance to request either the Yard or the Quad, but have been assigned on a purely random basis. A spokesman for the freshman dean's office said this is an effort to prevent the dissatisfaction provided by getting something you didn't ask for, and maybe it will. There are people who have been miserable in both the Yard and the Quad, whether they asked for them or not--and there are people in each who say they wouldn't have lived anywhere else. Each area--the Quad and the Yard and River Houses--has devotees who stay there for the entire duration of their Harvard careers, and where you'll be the happiest depends on who you are and how you approach things.

The Yard has traditionally been reserved for freshmen (although last year there were some sophomores living there and this year an entire dorm, Canaday, will be filled with upperclassmen), while freshmen at the Quad live in houses which are made up of students at every level. The Yard tends to be rowdier than the Quadrangle--everyone who lived recently in the Yard remembers all night shouting matches between Thayer and Holworthy ("Thayer Sucks!"), and has heard of the legendary Straus Rape and Pillage Society which paraded around the Yard last year on Thursday nights complete with drums and occasional bagpipes. The Quad is generally more sedate, with South House's milk and cookies more in character than the Yard's massive beer parties.

The Freshman Union--a huge building which caters primarily to freshmen and whose high ceilings and long tables emphasize noise and impersonalism--sets much of the Yard's tone. The Harvard presidents whose portraits surround the main dining room look down disapprovingly on the chaos and food fights which frequently disrupt meals there. Dining rooms in the Quad are smaller and more intimate, with more round tables and many more upperclassmen, and the noise level rarely reaches the pitches it does in the Union.

The different male-female ratios of the two areas also affect the lives of those who live there. When Harvard and Radcliffe merged their living facilities, the Radcliffe campus was set aside as the one place where a one-to-one ratio would be maintained, leaving the ratio in the rest of the campus closer to three-to-one. Ratios in the Yard vary from one-to-one in most of the East Yard to all-male in the Union dorms which are outside the Yard, and some of the entries in Wigglesworth, Straus and Holworthy.

The three-to-one ratio in the Yard takes a little getting used to. Men in the all-male entries often find it hard to get to know Harvard women, and hold many mixers in attempts to attract them and women from other colleges around Boston. There are always busloads of women from Wellesley in the Yard on weekends, and during the course of the year almost every male freshman goes to at least one mixer out there.

Women living in the Yard often complain about the ratio too--it's hard to get to know other women when most of the people around you are male. But the Yard's size--there are over 1200 people in it, about three-fourths of the freshman class--makes it easy to get to know people just by sitting with them at the Union or playing frisbee on the lawn, and there are always the mixers and the waterfights if you get desparate for company.

It isn't necessarily that much easier to get to know people at the Quad than it is in the Yard. To begin with, there are fewer freshmen around--about 300--and if you're intimidated by the thought of upperclassmen it may take you a while to get to know people. However, most of the freshmen at the Quad are in the same dorms, and thus have some sense of having their own place where they all can feel lost together.

Freshmen at the Quad are given singles or doubles, so if you asked for a small room you are more likely to end up there. The Yard is mainly composed of suites of two to five roommates with a living room and one less bedroom than there are roommates. But everyone on a corridor in the Quad shares a bathroom (sometimes they're coed, sometimes not), and the whole corridor can become a close group, much like many of the suites and smaller entryways in the Yard. Still, if you like privacy, you are more likely to find it at the Quad than in the Yard.

There are a few singles in the Yard, but they are all in the Union dorms, on the other side of the Union from the Yard. People who live in these all-male dorms get used to blank stares when they say they live in Pennypacker or Greenough, and Hurlbut residents are invariably asked if that isn't some kind of fish. The dorms are not really close to the center of the Yard, and people who live in them often feel isolated from its activities. But this usually disappears by the time the fall semester begins.

Freshmen living in the Quad often feel somewhat isolated from the rest of their class. They're a minority, and sometines they feel like it. Radcliffe is a 15 to 20 minute walk from the Yard, which is right next to most of the classroom buildings. You can usually wake up in the Yard on the hour, and make it to class by five past--a good thing if you like to sleep late. But the walk to the Quad can be really pleasant, especially in the fall and spring, and many devout 'Cliffe dwellers say they like the feeling of walking home after school, away from the noise and bustle of the College. A shuttle bus runs between the campuses at night, and if you miss it, the University Police will give you a lift, since the walk through the Common can be dangerous. People who live in the Quad generally plan their day around the walk--they come down to Harvard in time for their first class and stay until their last, often eating lunch at the Union which is open to anyone who wants to eat there.

Where the distance is most important is in its effect on the other freshmen. There are always people in the Yard who never go up to Radcliffe at all, because it seems like it's miles from anywhere. Freshmen at the Quad may find it difficult to maintain contact with the people they meet who live in the Yard, unless they take the initiative--they have to stop by and visit, because the Yard freshmen rarely come up their way. The Quad's only definite attraction to outsiders is Hilles Library, which is much more luxurious than the Yard's Lamont and is a great place to study when the Yard gets too noisy. Hilles's comfortable chairs and bright airy atmosphere contrast to Lamont's stiff wooden claustrophobia.

Part of the reason Radcliffe has been so unpopular in the last few years lies in the ever present stereotypes of the students who live there. Several years ago the Harvard Independent published an article on life at the Quad called "Wimps, Twerps, and Nerds." Everyone knows people at the Quad who don't fit into these categories at all, but somehow the popular image lingers on. The fact that the Quad is, on the whole, quieter than the Yard or the River Houses supports the conception of studious unsociable types who are supposed to live at the 'Cliffe, and keeps Yard freshmen from really giving the Quad a fair trial. But freshmen who live in the Quad are assigned there by random selection this year--there has been absolutely no attempt to put quieter people at the Quad, so the Yard will have just as many losers as the 'Cliffe, and probably more.

Although one is more likely to find assorted bizarre events going on in the Yard because of its size, than at the Quad, the freshmen at the Quad get noisier as they get less intimidated by the presence of upperclassmen. Doors open onto corridors and stereos start blasting and there'll even be a mixer or two. And if you don't like where you're living this year, remember that it only lasts a year--and if you don't like the people living near you, well, you don't have to let your residence determine your friends.