Harvard students pride themselves on being academically and emotionally intelligent individuals. We are keen to impress and to portray ourselves as the strong, competent leaders we are taught to become. The Harvard atmosphere amplifies the stigmas against crying. With the heightened pressures to live up to the Harvard name, many students feel the need to suppress their emotions in order to maintain a public facade of mature, undeterred young adults.
Hypothetically speaking, most Harvard students understand the strength of emotional complexity, however we still feel a level of shame or guilt after crying due to the internalized biases infringed on us by society. “Sometimes I will come out of [crying] feeling not worthy, not enough, not strong enough,” Alexandra Oikonomou ’26 said. “I will kind of tear myself apart saying, ‘you really shouldn’t have done that. That was not very Harvard students that trying to graduate with honors and go on to work in the UN of you.’”
At an institution that runs on success, admitting to emotional struggle can cause feelings of shame and guilt. However, crying is a tool of communication, an evolutionarily beneficial tool to convey danger or need for help.
“You can imagine there’d be a selection pressure to develop a signal system that wouldn’t let predators in on the fact that you’re vulnerable,” said Vassar College psychologist Randy Cornelius in an NPR article, “Teary – Eyed Evolution: Crying Serves a Purpose.”
Through natural selection, tears were designed to signal a need for human aid against animal predators. As humans became the apex predator, the benefits of public displays of vulnerability have dilapidated. However, tears have benefits without the need for protection. We still need love and comfort from those around us. Harvard’s emotional pressures may be easier to experience if we leaned on each other, but breaking down our barriers publicly is seen as taboo on this campus.
At Harvard we are all sharks, or at least we pretend to be. We speed through the treacherous waters of student organization comp processes, Finals Clubs punch, and academic prowess. We see crying as a means of displaying that we are the runts of the litter, left to the mercy of the killer whales—those who will make the Senior 48 or successfully comp the Lampoon in a single semester.
If the weakness and emotional vulnerability associated with tears was indeed harmful to survival, humans would have evolved out of it. Specifically, crying for the point of others seeing you cry was a major factor in its necessity: both to have safety in numbers and to fulfill the human need of love and comfort.
Tears “can also evoke strong emotions in the people who witness them,” according to the NPR article, facilitating bonding between individuals. Jack Sennott ’26 admits feeling closer to people after crying over a mutual hardship, but he still avoids crying in public. “In others, I can only perceive it with weakness. It’s a fault of mine,” he said. “It can feel judgmental at times, but I judge myself just as much.”
However, Sennott understands crying as a way to access one’s deepest emotions. “I do think it is a sign of weakness, but I don’t think that is a bad thing. Weakness can be good. [Combining] vulnerability and fragility, weakness is one word to describe both,” he said.
Some students have other ways of feeling catharsis. “I think I’m generally less emotional than the average Harvard student, but also people our age generally,” said Micah Williams ’24. “I think in some situations where other people might cry I always have the urge to let out a really big scream.”
Anger can be substituted for other, less comfortable emotions. Shani Bell wrote for the Fuller Life Family Therapy Institute that “some mental health professionals refer to anger as a secondary emotion. According to Dr. Harry Mills, anger is the emotion we are most aware we are experiencing. However, anger usually just hides the presence of deeper and less comfortable emotions like sadness, guilt, embarrassment, hurt, fear.”
Although these emotions are intrinsic to the human experience—especially for young adults at college—many Harvard students view their expression as signs of weakness of character. But releasing tears from our eyes is releasing what hinders us, a healthy method of externalizing our feelings. And if more people saw each other cry, perhaps we’d realize we are all facing the same pressures—we are not alone.
Maddy Tunnell ’26 (maddytunnell@college.harvard.edu) cries a lot—like an unnatural amount.