Cabot House
Heart-Eyed House
“Cabot House’s motto is Semper Cor, which translates to ‘always heart,’ and I think that’s embodied in everything about Cabot,” says House Committee (HoCo) co-chair Sanjna N. Rajagopalan ’26. One of the three upperclassman Houses in the Radcliffe Quadrangle (lovingly, and sometimes with loathing, known as “the Quad”), Cabot House proudly wears its heart on its sleeve.
It houses around 400 residents, or Cabotians, including notable alumni like Ketanji Brown Jackson '92, Rivers Cuomo '06, and Helen Keller, class of 1904 (Supreme Court and Weezer? Talk about range). Cabot House overlooks the Quad Lawn, seeing it through its summers of frisbee games and winters of snowball fights and igloos, with the Student Organization Center at Hilles right next door.
Cabot’s emphasis on community is highlighted even in its crest, which contains three codfish — the House’s mascot. “This is a personal interpretation: it’s the Quad. We are family, and we invite other people to also be fish with us. To join the fish family.” said HoCo co-chair Julia Alvarenga ’26, when asked about the meaning of the crest. Rajagopalan added, “Three musketeers. Three fishketeers.”
School of Fish
As highlighted by its motto, community is key to life in Cabot. Throughout the year, Cabot hosts many events, from Semper Corpse, their Halloween themed movie night on the Quad Lawn, to Festivus, their annual winter holiday party that features food, a burning of the year’s grievances, roasts, and even feats of strength. “People will clear their schedules for this and they’ll roast each other throughout the night,” says Rajagopalan.
Aside from their biggest events, though, Cabot’s sense of community is present year-round through smaller traditions. For instance, they host monthly ‘Great Cabot Bake Offs’ (as featured on Instagram) where sweet treats are elevated by a healthy dose of competition and a cozy kitchen. Other spur of the moment events also highlight Cabot’s community. “We had an aquarium… and one of our fishes died, so we had a fish funeral and everybody came in tuxes and black umbrellas and we ate sushi. It was awesome,” recounts Rajagopalan.
Above all, though, the community in Cabot is present in its everyday life. Alvarenga describes daily life in Cabot House as full of meaningful interactions with all of her fellow Cabotions, “From the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, I have interactions with people… they’re meaningful interactions, you know, in the bathroom or in the dining hall. It doesn’t matter with who, whether it’s…with the students, with the deans, with the dining hall staff, you will always find somebody to talk to.”
House Spirit(s)
Community is clearly at the heart of everything Cabot, and their House spirit definitely does not disappoint either. In intramural sports, Cabot has been playing the long game through their strategy of slowly rising the ranks. Rajagopalan described the strategy: “So we have this 12-year plan, this thing we joke about a lot because we were last. And we like to joke about it all in good spirit. But this year we’re doing, like, shockingly well, like six years ahead of our 12-year plan. We’re sixth right now, last I checked.” So, for you future Cabot sophomores looking to be involved in IMs, this is your chance to be part of an underdog story like no other!
Cabot’s House spirit is more vocal than any other House’s on Housing Day. “People don’t rally around their House, around their community, the way they do in the Quad,” says Rajagopalan, discussing the talent that goes into their Housing Day video. “Really, our only competition is Currier. You know, that’s where it’s at.”
But wait! Cabot is also home to literal spirits, most notably the ghost of Margaret Coleman Waites. Margaret haunts the infamous library suite of Cabot House (the library she donated to Radcliffe College) and has her own email address, from which she makes her presence known through periodic communication to current residents. Margaret isn’t the only spirit roaming the halls; past Cabotians are remembered throughout Cabot, with names written on the walls of the House’s tunnels, and the House gym is even named after a recent alumnus (the ‘Nik MAC’, named after Nikolas Kirk ’23, who, legend has it, only used it once).
Life Underwater
Enough about the dead. You want to know about living in Cabot, don’t you? Living arrangements in Cabot House vary widely, from hallway singles to massive suites of up to six people. Notably, sophomores in Cabot are able to get their own hallway singles, be it in the main buildings of the House or in Cronkhite Center, Cabot’s overflow housing. And, if the slightly longer walk from the Yard has you down, you’ll be happy to know almost every part of Cabot is connected by underground tunnels, with the only exceptions being the two ‘islands,’ Bertram Hall and Eliot Hall.
Once they begin life as a fish, Cabot residents have access to all sorts of amenities including the Aquarium, a dance studio, a theater, the biggest gym in the Quad, a pottery studio, beautiful common rooms, a wellness room, and an underwater collaborative room. In short, the House truly has everything you could ever need. And for those looking to get out of the Harvard bubble, Porter Square is just a short walk from the Quad, offering a whole new side of Cambridge to explore.
Even the dining hall upholds the charm of life in Cabot, in spite of its reputation as aesthetically un-pleasing. “People who are not part of Cabot will be like, oh, it looks like a retirement home. And you know what? So what? Like, it looks like a living room in the best way, that you feel comfortable walking around in your pajamas,” says Rajagopalan.
To The Newbies...
Finally, to the newest members of Cabot House, Alvarenga has a few words: “It’s like a coffee cup. You look at it at first, you will look, you might look at your letter and think, ‘Oh no, I’m Quadded. I will have to take the shuttle, I have to walk.’ It’s a bitter coffee. However, you can add sugar, you can add strawberry syrup, you can add vanilla, you can add whipped cream on top. And I would say that’s the Cabot experience. You make your own experience…it’s up to you. You can take the bitter coffee, or you can turn it into a frappuccino, a strawberry frappuccino with the strawberry on top and chocolate covered and sprinkles and whipped cream and chocolate sauce.”
Semper Cabot — and semper flyby!
