J-Term Housing: The Happy Truth

In the end, J-term housing wasn’t so difficult to obtain after all.

This past Monday, a mere 11 days after the application deadline, the College officially granted J-term housing to 1,316 out of the 1,404 undergraduates who applied—yielding a surprisingly high acceptance rate of 93 percent. Given the College’s ambiguous pre-deadline statements as to how many applicants it would allow to stay on campus and which student needs would actually translate into dormitory swipe access, the decision to permit almost all J-term applicants to stay at Harvard in January is both encouraging and commendable.

Originally, the administration had set a 1,000-person cap on the number of students who would be allowed to spend January in Harvard housing. We appreciate the flexibility of the College’s ultimate decision to admit more students who demonstrated legitimate needs (though the actual number on campus will never dramatically exceed 1,000 due to students’ different schedules). And, by any standard, the 93 percent of applicants accepted—which included students ranging from thesis writers to athletes to members of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals—is an impressive number to accommodate.

It is worth noting, however, that this high acceptance rate could have been even higher if the College allowed other students to stay on campus provided that they were willing to forgo a meal plan during their stay. These students would live in their houses and do their work like other J-term residents, but would eat elsewhere. Given the low cost of maintaining such meal-free roomers, we see no reason why these students could not also be allowed to spend at least a portion of January at Harvard.

But, overall, Monday’s results are excellent news, and we are pleased that the College, for the most part, recognized the wide array of reasons students have for remaining on campus during what would otherwise be an additional 20 days of vacation. But as this is the inaugural J-term—and these 1,316 students the first to be granted the privilege to remain on campus during that time—those in residence should behave responsibly so as not to ruin the chances of future applicants to receive housing during what, for many, is bound to be a crucial period for training, research, and intellectual activity.