Harvard Won the Game...

Fifteen Minutes magazine ran a scrutiny in 2004 that asked the question: “Should we all have gone to Yale?” My 17-year-old self read this piece and scoffed at the possibility that anyone would choose New Haven over Cambridge. I had been to nerd camp at Yale and decided that I hated fake Gothic architecture, the flower lady who peddled outside Starbucks, and a campus centered on overpriced shops and Au Bon Pain.

Three-and–a-half years later, at the Game for my last time as an undergraduate, my more cynical 20-year-old self reconsidered this pro-Harvard prejudgment. After all, there’s nothing so unique about our Square, where I regularly cut through the seating of Cambridge’s ABP so that I can avoid Spare Change Guy and the colonial-style bricks that destroy my heels. With the storefronts of my two former favorite coffee shops still vacant because of Harvard Real Estate’s prohibitively high rent, I am hard-pressed to remember what I liked about the area.

And Harvard does have one distinct disadvantage: its housing. After the Crimson’s victory, I came home to Dunster and proudly hung up my Harvard hoodie. In the process, I scraped my elbow, as I do everyday, on the exposed metal hinges of the closet in my 1936 servant’s quarter. I rationalized the peeling paint by imagining that Al Franken ’73 (Dunster) lived here. And who cares if my window is too warped to open? It’s already winter in Cambridge.

I love Harvard history and tradition. But I’d rather not live in an anachronism of a house. My best friend at Yale inhabits a spacious single, in the oldest college, with hardwood floors and window seats. I’ve always lived in oddly shaped, tiny walkthroughs in which I risk getting tetanus anytime I make sudden movements.

It seems a petty complaint, but the time lag between Harvard’s outdated Houses and Yale’s renovated Colleges is a marked one. In 1997, Yale committed to renovating all 12 Colleges and only three remain unfinished. Last May, the Committee on House Life (CHL) told The Crimson it would spend the summer choosing a renovation plan for the River Houses. The report assessing the various construction possibilities will be complete by the end of the month, according to an e-mail from Dean Suzy M. Nelson. But the CHL has no timetable for when their “vision” of house renovations will be articulated or—the more daunting step—implemented.

With all eyes on Allston development, I fear poor Dunster, Lowell, and Winthrop will be forgotten. For all the concern about student social space on campus, there seems to be no hope in sight for student living space. The Penthouse Café and fancy Pub aren’t going to improve senior satisfaction surveys until the illogical interiors of the oldest houses are remodeled for the 21st century.

I’m still glad that I wore crimson instead of blue, but at the CHL’s frustrating pace, Harvard will fall even further behind Yale in the student satisfaction game. With the draw of the Square dwindling (hello, Citibank), the party coffers dry, and General Education and advising in flux, what’s a naïve prefrosh have to look forward to but cramped triples and sexile?



Kristina M. Moore ’08 is a history and literature concentrator in Dunster House. She is president of The Crimson.