PlanetHolt.com

Today was Freshman Housing Day! This is a big tradition at Harvard, when the freshman find out what House they will belong to for the next three years.

The process begins in early March, when freshmen register their “blocking” and “linking” groups. Basically, you’re allowed to form a group of up to eight people that will all be placed in the same House. Then, you are allowed to “link” with another group of eight, and although you won’t be in the same House, you will be in the same neighborhood.

The excitement really starts a few days before Housing Day, when all the Houses start advertising to the freshman. Since freshman don’t actually get a choice of what house they are going to belong to, this is more for House pride than anything else. (It’s also rather notable that it is the less popular houses that generally advertise the most… perhaps so freshman who get placed there won’t be disappointed.) One example is this video made for Mather House:

The freshman dining hall was also a popular spot for large groups of upperclassmen to gather to cheer their houses.

The night before Housing Day is traditionally when “River Run” occurs. Although the tradition has a variety of forms, the essential idea is that each freshman goes to the courtyard of each upperclass House they would like to be placed in and takes a shot while appealing to the “River Gods” with some kind of cheer. Of course, since many students have midterms/early morning classes/etc. on Housing Day, it is also common to just walk from house to house with your blocking group.

The second part of the Housing Day Eve tradition involves making a boat out of paper/cardboard, writing the names of all the Houses you don’t want on the boat, and then taking it down to the River, lighting it on fire, and letting it float away. According to the upperclassmen, this tradition is generally tolerated by Harvard University Police. Unfortunately for our class, though, someone decided to fill an Axe bottle with alcohol and light it on fire down by the river. Someone else apparently saw this fire and thought the boat house was on fire, and decided to call the fire department. This got the State Police involved, and soon the entire river bank was covered with police cars, leaving many freshman to wander around with unburned boats and unfulfilled traditions.

The morning of Housing Day, groups of students from each House wander around screaming and hand-deliver letters to each blocking group announcing their assignment. Starting at 8:30, my blocking group sat anxiously in the hallway awaiting news. Every time we heard cheering, we started freaking out, but there were many false alarms before we discovered:

PFO HO!!!

Pforzheimer House (a.k.a. Pfo Ho) is part of the Radcliffe Quadrangle (aka the Quad) that used to be the campus of Radcliffe before Harvard went coed.

Following finding out Housing, all of the Houses send large numbers of representatives to Annenberg (the freshman dining hall) to celebrate the new freshmen and to give free house t-shirts to everyone. This celebration was once thought by a news channel to be an Iraq War protest: