House system Nearly all undergraduates live on campus, for the first year in dormitories in or near
Harvard Yard and later in the upperclass houses—administrative subdivisions of the college as well as living quarters, providing a sense of community in what might otherwise be a socially incohesive and administratively daunting university environment. Each house is presided over by two faculty deans, while its Allston Burr Resident Dean — an Assistant Dean of the college who is usually an appointed lecturer or a junior faculty member in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences — supervises undergraduates' day-to-day academic and disciplinary well-being. The faculty deans and resident dean are assisted by other members of the Senior
Common Room—select graduate students (tutors), faculty, and university officials brought into voluntary association with each house. The faculty deans and resident dean reside in the house, as do resident tutors. Terms like tutor, Senior Common Room, and Junior Common Room reflect a debt to the
constituent college systems at Oxford and Cambridge from which Harvard's system took inspiration. The houses were created by President Lowell in the 1930s to combat what he saw as pernicious social stratification engendered by the private, off-campus living arrangements of many undergraduates at that time. Lowell's solution was to provide every man—Harvard was male-only at the time—with on-campus accommodations throughout his time at the college; Lowell also saw great benefits in other features of the house system, such as the relaxed discussions—academic or otherwise—which he hoped would take place among undergraduates and members of the Senior Common Room over meals in each house's dining hall. How students come to live in particular houses has changed greatly over time. Under the original "draft" system, masters (now called "faculty deans") negotiated privately over the assignment of students. From the 1960s to the mid-1990s, each student ranked the houses according to personal preference, with a lottery resolving the oversubscription of more popular houses. Today, groups of one to eight freshmen form a block which is then assigned, essentially at random, to an upperclass house. The nine "River Houses" are south of Harvard Yard, near the
Charles River:
Adams,
Dunster,
Eliot,
Kirkland,
Leverett,
Lowell,
Mather,
Quincy, and
Winthrop. Their construction was financed largely by a 1928 gift from
Yale alumnus
Edward Harkness, who, frustrated in his attempts to initiate a similar project at his alma mater, eventually offered $11 million to Harvard. Construction of the first houses began in 1929, but the land on which they were built had been assembled decades before. After graduating from Harvard in 1895,
Edward W. Forbes found himself inspired by the Oxford and Cambridge systems during two years of study in England; on returning to the United States he set out to acquire the land between Harvard Yard and the Charles River that was not already owned by Harvard or an associated entity. By 1918, that ambition had been largely fulfilled and the assembled land transferred to Harvard. The three
Quad Houses,
Cabot,
Currier, and
Pforzheimer House, enjoy a residential setting half a mile northwest of Harvard Yard. These were built by
Radcliffe College and housed
Radcliffe College students until the Harvard and Radcliffe residential systems merged in 1977. A thirteenth house, Dudley Community, formerly called
Dudley House, is nonresidential but fulfills the administrative and social functions provided to on-campus residents by the other twelve houses for undergraduate students living in the Dudley Co-op, many of the undergraduate students living off-campus (which are small in number), and the Visiting Undergraduate Students who study at Harvard for a term or year. Harvard's residential houses are paired with Yale's residential colleges in sister relationships.
Student government The Harvard Undergraduate Council (UC) was the student government of Harvard College until it was abolished by a student referendum in 2022. It was replaced by the Harvard Undergraduate Association (HUA).
Athletics match in 2006 , home of
Harvard Crimson and the
Boston Cannons The
Harvard Crimson fields 42 intercollegiate sports teams in the
NCAA Division I Ivy League, more than any other
NCAA Division I college in the country. Every two years, the Harvard and Yale
track and field teams come together to compete against a combined
Oxford and
Cambridge team in the oldest continuous international amateur competition in the world. As with other Ivy League universities, Harvard does not offer
athletic scholarships. Harvard's athletic rivalry with
Yale is intense in every sport in which they meet, coming to a climax each fall in the annual
football meeting, which dates back to 1875 and is usually called simply "
The Game". While Harvard's football team is no longer one of the best as it was in football's early days, both Harvard and Yale have influenced the way the game is played. In 1903,
Harvard Stadium introduced a new era into football with the first permanent reinforced concrete stadium of its kind in the country. Even older than HarvardYale football rivalry, the Harvard–Yale Regatta is held each June on the
Thames River in eastern Connecticut. The Harvard crew is typically considered to be one of the top teams in the country in
rowing. Other sports in which Harvard teams are particularly strong are
men's ice hockey,
squash, and men's and women's
fencing. Harvard's men's ice hockey team won the school's first NCAA Championship in any team sport in 1989, and Harvard also won the
Intercollegiate Sailing Association National Championships in 2003. Harvard was the first Ivy League school to win an NCAA Championship in a women's sport when its women's lacrosse team won in 1990. The school color is
crimson, which is also the name of Harvard's sports teams and the student newspaper,
The Harvard Crimson. The color was unofficially adopted (in preference to
magenta) by an 1875 vote of the student body, although the association with some form of red can be traced back to 1858, when
Charles William Eliot, a young graduate student who would later become Harvard's 21st and longest-serving president (1869–1909), bought red bandanas for his crew so they could more easily be distinguished by spectators at a regatta.
Fight songs in 2004; founded in 1852, the
Harvard–Yale Regatta is the oldest intercollegiate athletic rivalry in the United States. Harvard has several fight songs, the most played of which, especially at football, are "
Ten Thousand Men of Harvard" and "
Harvardiana". While "
Fair Harvard" is actually the
alma mater, "Ten Thousand Men" is better known outside the university. The
Harvard University Band performs these fight songs and other cheers at football and hockey games. These were parodied by Harvard alumnus
Tom Lehrer in his song "
Fight Fiercely, Harvard", which he composed while an undergraduate.
Athletics history By the late 19th century, critics of intercollegiate athletics, including Harvard president
Charles William Eliot, believed that sports had become over-commercialized and took students away from their studies. They called for limitations on all sports. This opposition prompted Harvard's athletic committee to target "minor" sports—basketball and hockey—for reform in order to deflect attention from the major sports: football, baseball, track, and crew. The committee made it difficult for the basketball team to operate by denying financial assistance and limiting the number of overnight away games in which the team could participate.
Student organizations Harvard has more than 450 undergraduate student organizations. The
Phillips Brooks House Association acts as an umbrella service organization. ==Notable alumni==