Prior to receiving our housing assignment three years ago, my blockmates and I made a pact—we would treat whichever House we had been placed into as the one we had been wanting all along. It ended up great. We were placed into Pforzheimer, and we have grown to love the resources and community of the House over the years. I truly believe that this can be the experience of any freshman regardless of the assignment they receive this Thursday, but there is absolutely no reason to start them off on the wrong foot by hierarchically ranking the Houses.
Each year, The Harvard Crimson Flyby blog posts their rankings of the Houses online. As a freshman, I remember excitedly following the updates as the week before Housing Day progressed. I bought into it, and I figured that since The Crimson staff was composed of students, they knew what they were talking about. Now, having spent time at each of the Houses over the past several years, it has become blatantly obvious to me that there are great aspects, and some not so great ones, of each House.
But let’s stop ranking them. Students here inevitably come to take immense pride in their House, and that is a wonderful thing. However, our primary identity here—the one that should take precedence over all—is our collective identity as Harvard students. We’re in this thing together, and in the midst of a time where mental health issues are at the forefront of student conversation, we should be taking measures to encourage people, not giving them reasons to get disappointed. There will certainly be freshmen placed into Currier on Thursday whose first thought will be to remember that the student newspaper listed their new home as the worst residential option on campus. We don’t need that.What we do need are initiatives such as the recently established “Why I Love My House” tumblr that promotes the aspects of upperclass housing freshmen can look forward to.
To be clear, I am all for Flyby posting overviews of each House during the week before Housing Day. But this can be done in such a way that lists the positive, and even a few negative, aspects of each House that are generally accepted by the student body without putting them in some order that, frankly, doesn’t make any sense. We’re all Harvard students, so let’s help each other out.
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