Head O'Charles

Head of the Charles Weekend could have been so simple.

Invite a few crew teams to Cambridge. Host a few races. First boat across the finish line wins and everybody's happy.

But no.

Instead, we have Alcatraz on the Charles. The gates to the Houses will be locked shut, and only those with IDs and their registered guests will be allowed inside. Parties are banned, kegs are banned, and roving teams of enforcers will wander the Square in case a drop of the demon Rolling Rock should escape.

This massive display of power is not to safeguard the virtue of Harvard students, however. In a rare interface with reality, University administrators appear to have recognized that undergraduates do consume alcoholic beverages, some of them on a regular basis.

Instead, it's for the prep school students who descend upon this city like a swarm of locusts, if locusts wore J. Crew barn jackets.

Administrators have tried to discourage the chronologically disadvantaged from attending festivities with a letter aimed at headmasters of nearby prep schools, to little avail. The pen may be mightier then the sword, but it's no match for the promise of free beer.

So when you ask the attractive stranger you meet at some party this weekend what school he or she attends, bear in mind that their response will probably feature the word "Phillips."

Not that there are going to be any parties this weekend. Definitely not. No parties at all.

Actually, the best way to survive Head of the Charles is to hide in your room and catch up on all the work you've missed since September. If you must get out, explore the North End or Inman Square. And don't even think about the Grille. Almost anywhere ordinarily worth going will be clotted with 16-year-olds wearing Harvard sweatshirts so new they still reek of plastic.

Be prepared to spend your evenings listening to drunken interchanges between visitors hunting for Mount Auburn Street and visitors in search of JFK, and your mornings offering them (now hung-over but still confused) directions to the T. For amusement, however, you'll have the fun of watching some Crimson Key guide try to explain the empty bottles littering the Yard to a flock of minicam-toting parents.

You'll also have the regatta. While they tend to get lost amid the noise and the drink, the boat races are nominally why most people come to the Head of the Charles. Cheering on your friends for their willingness to rise at 5 a.m. every morning and launch themselves on an icy river is a worth while experience, even if you have to dodge all of Milton Academy to do it.

In any case, it only comes once a year. Unlike other Harvard afflictions that just don't seem to go away (hourlies for one; Union food for another), the Head of the Charles takes one weekend and is gone for the year. A little Sam Adams spilled on your hall floor is a small price to pay for the grand of competition boats gliding across the water's surface.

It might even inspire some watchers to take up the sport themselves. Crew is a sport with a proud tradition, after all, and one that inculcates many useful skills. If you ever get trapped by a rising flood with seven of your friends and a really expensive boat, that is. But rowers do lift to gain strength, run for speed and endurance and practice together for teamwork.

In fact, if you work hard and build up, you might just be able to make it through the Head of the Charles Weekend next year.