Housing Day River Rituals Devolve Into Police Crackdown

Wednesday night’s “River Run” came to an abrupt halt when the Cambridge Fire Department arrived on the scene in response to a call about a possible fire at the Weld Boathouse.

Members of the Harvard University Police Department as well as officers of the Cambridge and Massachusetts State Police forces, accompanied the fire-fighters, spreading out along a stretch of the Charles River between Eliot and Mather Houses to ward away undergraduates from the river’s bank.



The alleged cause of the disruption was the recent pre-Housing Day tradition of launching lit cardboard boats bearing the names of desired Houses into the Charles. Embarkations began around 10:30 p.m., with many freshmen blocking groups arriving at the water’s edge hauling elaborate, multi-tiered creations.

But as the night progressed, groups began to douse their boats with flammable liquids—nail polish remover and Axe Body Spray proved popular choices—eventually drawing firefighters’ attention to what has for years been an innocent, if pyromanic, tradition.

“There’s people who sleep along the river,” said Nicole Zedlais, a firewoman who responded to the approximately 11:30 p.m. call.

Zedlais also said the riverbank had grown dangerously dry from the lack of rain, which she said prompted a particularly urgent response when the local emergency dispatcher relayed a call that “the rear of the boathouse was on fire.”

In her six years on the force, Zedlais said she had never even heard of the “River Run,” her unfamiliarity further evidencing that last night’s spectacle was out-of-the-ordinary.

When the Harvard police did arrive, at roughly the same time as the Cambridge Fire Department, the two departments quickly shut down the river’s perimeter, stationing officers on either end of Weeks footbridge.

According to several student accounts, HUPD acted to shield wayward freshmen, encouraging students to move on so as to avoid any altercation with city and state officers.

Margaret E. Soutter ’12, whose blocking group was walking along the river at the time, said that Cambridge police were taking the tougher line, threatening, “‘If you don’t back away from the river in 30 seconds, we’re gonna lock you up.’”

Neither the Cambridge Police Department nor HUPD returned requests for comment yesterday.

Some freshmen sought to avoid the fracas by moving several hundred yards downstream, but were confronted by a different contingent of officers.

“We went all the way down to the other end of the river and doused our boat in nail polish remover,” said Kelsey A. Koff ’12.

When Cambridge police arrived, Koff said, “They talked to us in a really condescending way,” saying that an arrest would lead to expulsion and that “‘Mommy and Daddy will be pissed.’”

Still, some upperclassmen found time to relish the evening. Rachel E. Flynn ’09 and Barry A. Shafrin ’09 found themselves in the thick of the revelry Wednesday night and decided to set fire to a miniature paper boat in a puddle outside of Winthrop House.

“The po-po shut down the real river,” Flynn said.

“This isn’t for our House,” Shafrin added, laughing. “This is for our careers.”

—Staff writer Edward-Michael Dussom can be reached at emdussom@fas.harvard.edu.