Party Website Changes Name

Under pressure from the University, the popular website HarvardParties.com has changed its name to HahvahdPahties.com.

Started this past fall “to serve and protect your right to party,” the site was ordered by the University provost’s office to remove “Harvard” from its name.

Zachary A. Corker ’04, Paul H. Hersh ’04 and Darren S. Morris ’05, the website’s creators, said they were first warned by the Dean of the College’s office in October that they might be asked to change the site’s moniker, which violates the provost’s policy on the use of the Harvard name.

In negotiations, the provost’s office explained that they would have to become an official student group in order to legally use the University’s name.

In that scenario they would have to use .org instead of .com, and since the group consists only of undergraduate students, they would only be able to use the name “Harvard College” instead of the more general “Harvard.”

Corker, Hersh and Morris decided instead to rename their site Hahvahdpahties.com, which Acting Associate Dean of the College for Student Affairs Judith H. Kidd, in an e-mail to the group, called “a clever solution to the name problem.”

“It was really surprising to us that they would go after us, their own students,” said Morris, who said that as he understood it, the goal of the provost’s name policy is to prevent people without a connection to Harvard from exploiting the University’s name.

Morris said that changing the organization’s name was purely a legal issue and that he did not interpret the provost’s order as antagonistic towards the group.

“The University’s administration is not ‘anti-parties,’” he said. “They did not try to shut down our site. In fact, we have received a lot of support from the Dean’s office. They recognize that we are needed on campus.”

University officials did not return phone calls seeking comment yesterday.

While Morris said changing his group’s name was an inconvenience, the three founders of HarvardParties.com said they do not anticipate a decline in the site’s popularity.

In a few days, the website will officially be HahvahdPahties.com, and anyone trying to access it at the old name will be automatically redirected to the new URL.

The group will also launch an advertising campaign to publicize the new name.

Anna Tseretopoulos ’07, who said she uses the site frequently, believes the name change won’t have an effect on the site’s traffic.

“If they have to change the name for legal reasons, I guess that’s okay, but it sounds kind of stupid to me,” she said.