Harvard's social life...

HH05
Sat, 09 Apr 2005 22:23:22 +0000

“I was being sarcastic, poking fun at the people” – You prove my point (incredible insecurity)



How is it insecure to poke fun at people who think that just because you are telling them where you attend school, that you are being a show off? Please explain your line of logic to me.



Anyway, unless someone can show me evidence of a social scene that differs from that detailed in the 2 web sites referenced above, then HH05 and Byerly, it sounds like your Hbombs are not detonating when they land.



The first link is bull. Here is why:



Here’s a link addressing the unscientific methodology of COFHE surveys:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2003/survey.html

Note that participation is voluntary and that the school’s GOAL is 40% participation; less than one third of students filled it out. The survey is time-consuming, and the only incentive provided is a shot at winning a gift certificate. Students with the best and worst experiences are going to be way more motivated to spend time filling out the survey than the rank and file. In other words, there’s no check in place to ensure that the survey results will reflect an accurate cross-section of student opinion…and no social scientist worth his salt would assume that they would.

Now, this data is still valuable to schools themselves, which for the most part don’t get any feedback from their students in any other way. The information that a bunch of this year’s MIT seniors are ****ed off about issue XYZ doesn’t need to be empirical to be useful to the administration. But as a tool for COMPARING one school to another, when we don’t know how each of the 31 schools incentivized the survey, or how effectively they publicized it, or whether the culture among seniors encouraged or discouraged filling it out, or how many seniors actually completed it…not scientific, not reliable, and not a justifiable basis for drawing relative conclusions about the schools.

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=667157&postcount=12

But then again, it seems you’re pretty insistent on the validity of that survey.

As for studentsreview.com–for a school like Harvard, I wouldn’t trust it too much. You never know what kind of people with too much free time would do on sites like that. If you do want some positive comments about Harvard’s social life, check out the '09 Prefrosh Yahoo group ( Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos; ). Hell, I’ll post an email about social life there for you.:

This is from “Becca,” from the class of '08.



Okay guys…I started writing this and it just got ridiculously long
(guess that’s good that there’s lots to say!). So, this is just going
to be my Party Post, okay? :)

Yeah, I mean to be honest most people do stay on campus to party, but
if you have friends at nearby schools transportation is really really
easy. In fact, recently a bunch of my guy friends went to this dance
at Wellesley (where all the guys dress up as girls…don’t ask) -
there’s a free bus that goes there very often. Oh, and a lot of my
friends also go to MIT (ask Ivan, as I recall he went quite often).
And I once had this really funny midnight adventure where I was at a
club in Boston (oh yeah…people def go to those too, but more on this
in a minute), got on a RANDOM ass bus with my friends and ended up at
Tufts. Then we had random Tufts people whom we had just met to drive
us back to campus. ;D Don’t worry they were little Asian girls and
weren’t going to do anything to us, I’m not demented.

Lol, yup…craziness. And hey now, I refuse to be dubbed as a boring
loser just because I’m modding (is that a word?) this Yahoo group!
I definitely do have a trillion things to do that I’m still doing;
it’s just important to me that you guys have the same opportunities
that we had last year, because I know how much it makes a difference
to your experience. And same goes for the other mods I’m sure (esp
Ivan, who is currently taking a semester off to work a very
prestigious job formerly held by 40+ year olds…he’s a busy guy!). So
don’t worry, Harvard people do have lives – if anything they’re too
freakin involved in everything and need to streamline.

Okay, so I said I’d talk about the Boston/club social scene. Harvard
organizations actually have events in Boston quite often. It’s
awesome…the IRC (International Relations Council) semiformal was
there, the BSA (Black Students Association) formals are at clubs,
Woodbridge Intl Society is planning on organizing a club party or two
next fall for you guys, the CityStep dance was there, Harvard-Yale
weekend they opened the entire street of clubs for one entrance fee
(haha that was the night of the crazy Tufts story), and the freshman
formal was held at the Park Plaza Hotel (gorgeous). That’s all off the
top of my head. Also, people I know go there just on normal weekends
if things at Harvard are a little more lowkey, or they want a change
of pace.

I will also here insert one great party anecdote and a shameless plug
for the IRC The best party I’ve been to yet at Harvard (and I go to
like two or three every weekend on average, so it’s been a lot) was
the IRC Semiformal mentioned above; they gave us FREE transportation
into Boston, FREE entrance into this nice club with an amazing DJ, and
FREE cocktails on the house. And when I say cocktails, I mean they
were like phenomenal…Scorpion bowls the size of your head that took
8 of us to finish, with flaming lemons on top. So, it pays to be in an
organization with a lot of funding ;)

Hmmmm what else…something my wonderful SAMC (South Asian Men’s
Collective) boys did at the tsunami benefit dance was set up and
advertise various pregaming stations to go to before their event, and
use UC funding to buy alcohol. So everyone was properly tipsy and
herded out to the party, which ended up absolutely filling all of
Lowell dining hall. And a member of the class of '08 is actually a
world-class DJ (top 5 or something internationally), so he was laying
the beats and it was just amazing.

So those are student-group-sponsored events. But to give you an
example of the average weekend of like house partying, it starts kind
of early (10ish, because parties are crashed by HUPD at 2…it sucks I
know). Most of them get really good at around midnight - 1, so you can
get away with going out then every time. You usually just go with a
bunch of your friends to upperclass houses (and there’s a lot of cell
phoning first to find out what’s going on that night). Sometimes
they’re good, other times not, but there’s usually quite a decent
selection and you end up party-hopping until you’re happy (so that’s a
good incentive to start early…unless you’re lazy like me and let your
friends do the work;). Oh also, it’s ridiculously easy to throw your
own parties as an upperclassman; they even give you funding! All you
really have to do is get clearance, take their money, buy food &
alcohol, and post signs saying “You must be over 21 to drink” that no
one regards. lol. But you do have to kick everyone out by 2.

As a frosh, it’s a little more difficult because you have resident
proctors that live like right under you. However, if your proctor is
cool (this year, Grays Middle is a renowned party spot cause their
proctor doesn’t give a crap what they do), you can really get away
with a lot. But I would be careful; you can get Ad boarded if you’re
caught with alcohol. We’ve thrown quite a few parties in our room
actually, but one time HUPD came because we were being too loud, so
that can be a pain (because you’re right in the Yard so it’s more
noticeable I guess).

However, if you’re upset at the early ending time, you can always go
to finals clubs. They have their own houses and their parties aren’t
university affiliated so they can end whenever they want. They’ve got
really nice buildings in convenient locations…although when you step
in you do get the impression of “old money”. I’m not gonna lie, I’m
not a big fan of them in general (this would be a whole other
discussion in itself…the women discrimination, the whole “pleasing
others to be cool” BS, the huge emphasis on being wealthy, etc.) but
you can def manage to have a healthy social life with or without them.