Party Ban Takes Prefrosh Off-Campus

As prospective freshmen scour Harvard’s Friday night party scene this weekend, they will find very few options on campus.

The College is not allowing parties in Houses tonight, in accordance with a campus noise prevention policy the night before the administration of the MCAT test, the pre-medical school exam.

While Kirkland House Master Tom Conley said he did not know who enacted the ban, he said he believed it made sense.

“The exam is grueling...They need a good night’s sleep before going into the field of battle,” he said.

However, some students are finding other ways to have their fun.

The Harvard Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA) has turned to an off-campus locale to hold its Friday night party.

“Varsity,” the BGLTSA’s final annual dance, has been moved to 45 Mt. Auburn Street next to Tommy’s Pizza.

“We hope that prefrosh of all genders and sexualities will come and have a great time meeting others at the dance,” wrote BGLTSA Social Chair Rachel A. Culley ’07 in an e-mail.

BGLTSA regularly holds its final dance on prefrosh weekend, according to Culley.

“We also have a ‘Prefrosh Meet and Greet’ the next day, where prefrosh can mingle and talk to current BGLTSA members,” she said.

Some students have organized their own festivities separate from group-sponsored parties.

Kwame Owusu-Kesse ’06, who threw “The Takeover,” a popular party in New Haven over Harvard-Yale weekend, has organized “The Lockdown,” a party at Hoffa’s Swiss Alps bar on 114 Mt. Auburn Street. “The Lockdown” has explicitly billed itself as a party for prefrosh, although the poster stresses that one must be “18 to dance, 21 to stumble.”

Owusu-Kesse said he is determined to show prefrosh that “Harvard students love to have fun.” Owusu-Kesse’s posters proclaim, “We’re puttin’ the MCAT & LSAT behind bars.”

Owusu-Kesse said he didn’t understand why prefrosh weekend is held while a party ban is in place.

“Better planning could have occurred so that prefrosh weekend did not take place on the same weekend [as the MCAT exam], as it is unfair to prefrosh and to those students who aren’t taking these tests,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Last year, prefrosh weekend did not fall on the same weekend as the MCAT test.

The Boston Globe reported last March that Harvard undergraduates gave lower ratings to their college experience than students at other elite schools in a 2002 survey.

The comparatively low rating of faculty accessibility and social life confirmed the long-held stereotype that, despite Harvard’s reputation as the gold standard of education, the University in many ways fails to meet the needs of its undergraduate needs.

Many administrators and House Masters contacted could not explain the source of the party ban.

“We just inherited it...we came into a tradition,” Conley said.

“I didn’t even know there was a campus-wide ban,” said Leverett House Master Howard Georgi. “The prefrosh and everyone else should be resting up for the 80s Dance on Saturday anyway.”