The Spirit Is Weak

Mather House is “NOT JUST ANY HOUSE,” assures a video uploaded to a well-trafficked Internet site, “BUT A CRAAAZZZY HOUSE . . . SONNN!!”

That hulking concrete monstrosity on the easternmost fringe of campus, which I have the dubious distinction of calling home, indeed proffers many unique amenities to its fortunate inhabitants. All students enjoy private bedrooms—hence the much-invoked “Singles for Life” slogan. The upper floors of the high-rise boast panoramas of the Boston skyline. The Soviet-style Brutalist aesthetic endows the courtyard with an ineffable proletariat charm.

But much more importantly, Mather has House spirit—and a lot of it.

Indeed, as the Crimson reminded its readers, Mather House is “long famed for its Housing Day fervor,” and last Thursday, the denizens of 10 Cowperthwaite Street did not disappoint.

Bedecked in their powder-blue House T-shirts, slightly tipsy from early-morning cocktails, and with faces and coifs streaked with distinctive red paint, Matherites marched triumphantly through the Yard waving placards emblazoned with sexual innuendoes en route to greeting newly-Housed freshmen outside of Annenberg Hall.

The emotional roller-coaster of Housing Day—when the winnowing fan of the random lottery indiscriminately determines freshmen’s residential fate—is nothing if not an effusion of the much-vaunted yet sparingly-sighted sentiment known as “House spirit.”

Houses compete with each other over the amount of exuberance and affection displayed by their welcoming embassies as well as their newest affiliates in Annenberg. As leonine and simian mascots romped through the hall, upperclassmen hoisted the colors and insignia of the armigerous Houses on banners, mouthing improvised panegyrics to their residences with unbridled enthusiasm. The privileged freshmen placed in Eliot or Adams undoubtedly interspersed their justified excitement with sighs of relief, as those “Quadded” unfortunates concealed their profound disappointment with airy-fairy promises of “community.” On Housing Day, there is seemingly no sadness—there is only the comfort and contentment of knowing your next three years will be spent alongside House-mates similarly imbued with a proud sense of “spirit.”

But despite this Bacchanalia, Harvard House spirit spends most of the year convalescing in a state of torpidity.

And why should it not? After the fleeting euphoria of Housing Day, freshmen will soon realize just how incomprehensible it is to cultivate a contrived “spirit” for a collection of structures—of red brick, if they are fortunate—that will only minimally impact their college life. Products of a completely randomized lottery, Harvard upperclassmen have little incentive to embrace the House into which they had been so haphazardly placed.

The eight-member limit for blocking groups—down from 20 under the pre-randomization regime—ensures that one’s group of friends is splintered even before being arbitrarily distributed throughout campus. The “communities” that result, twelve microcosmic Harvards with ethnic ratios comparable to the University as a whole, elevate diversity not only as a principle of social or educational justice but as a fact of quotidian life.

Regardless of the socially-conscious pretensions of Harvard administrators, students, like all men, naturally gravitate toward others who share their interests, their background, and their worldviews. If students cannot express that inclination in their House placement, they will seek the camaraderie in cultural organizations, sports teams, and other extracurriculars. And thus will leave the Houses empty of any real sense of community.

The sort of regional patriotism which House “spirit” clumsily approximates is indeed a very natural and healthy phenomenon. One inherently feels affection for the soil on which he has been born and raised, where he and his neighbors have long known each other, reflect local peculiarities of speech and custom, and profess a common conception of the world. A home is something worthy of being proud—something distinctly one’s own.

Harvard Houses, however, lack anything distinctively “homey” about them—aside from superficial architectural and geographical disparities, each is an equivalent incubator of diversity. Without the self-perpetuating composition encouraged during the pre-randomization era—freshmen jocks and artists, for example, were undoubtedly attracted to the House with the preponderant population of each—House traditions inexorably fade. Any individual character associated with a House, indeed, will dissipate following the inauguration of each new—and completely random—class of freshmen.

The mindless tenor of Housing Day “spirit” itself testifies to the dearth of real local attachment among House residents. Deprived of any enduring points of pride—or even the assurance of living with more than seven of one’s friends—upperclassmen resort to the most banal and vulgar praises of their Houses.

On that same promotional video, residents solemnly profess the sacrifices they would make for Mather House—why such sacrifices would ever be needed, one is left wonder. One resident sheds his dignity by sticking a finger in his nostril, another promises to christen a future child in the House’s honor, and one courageous soul is willing even to die for Mather.

Die, perhaps, out of boredom.

Christopher B. Lacaria ’09 is a history concentrator in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.