At long last, Harvard College Housing Day is here again. This annual event—sometimes touted as one of the most important days of a student’s years at the College—decides which of 12 Houses will become a first-year’s home for the next three years. First-years spend the months after winter break navigating blocking group formation—an often dramatic ordeal in which students scramble to form cohorts of one to eight people with whom they will enter the housing lottery. After registering with their chosen set of peers, first-years then must wait in anticipation for the Thursday before Spring Recess to discover their assignment.
Many students fear being “Quadded,” or being sorted into one of three Houses in the Radcliffe Quadrangle—Cabot, Currier, and Pforzheimer. Offering a close to five-minute walk instead of a 20-minute trek to Harvard Yard, the nine River Houses remain highly coveted by many. As students gear up for their Housing Day reveal, many consider “River Run” the ultimate tradition to kick off the highly anticipated day and manifest their River placement.
River Run is the long-anticipated Wednesday evening of cavalier and debauched drinking when first-years stumble to each River House in a superstitious, ritualistic pursuit of good fortune for the next morning. Willing participants take shots with upperclassmen friends and pray to the River Gods for luck against the dreaded Quad Houses.
Now that Housing Day has arrived, it’s seemingly the perfect time to reflect upon the unsanctioned, unruly activities of bygone River Run escapades.
“River Run was one of the best nights of freshman year,” Chanden Climaco ’27 reflected. “Running around with your whole class playing the college version of trick-or-treat in the rain… It was a really unique and cool bonding moment.”
“Aside from Harvard-Yale, I feel like [River Run] was one of the most iconic Harvard experiences, and it was just so much fun and chaotic,” Maya Flores ’27 added.
But where does this beloved tradition originate? While the exact details remain unknown, the event supposedly began in 1996, the year after the Housing process shifted from being choice-based to a completely randomized lottery. In an effort to tilt the odds in their favor, students have embraced a variety of superstitions and rituals. Iterations of these rituals included giving ‘offerings’ to the River Gods by throwing sentimental possessions into the Charles River or burning paper boats on the river. In recent years, however, River Run has evolved into a steady rite of passage.
Recent years brought River Runners particularly specific obstacles. Two years ago, Housing Day Eve saw the Class of 2026 left without conventional ID access to all River Houses. This restriction was part of an effort by campus security and the Harvard University Police Department to curb the tradition’s inherent underage drinking. However, this effort instead left students hopping fences, breaking through windows, scaling walls, splitting pants, and tearing jackets to make their way inside each dorm building.
In an anonymous statement to the Independent, a junior in Eliot House described their blocking group’s efforts to evade heightened surveillance during their River Run. “When we were trying to get from Eliot to Kirkland, we realized there was a lot of security in and around both houses,” they explained. “The upperclassmen whose room we were in in Eliot told us that we could scale the roof from Eliot to Kirkland by going through the library window.”
“We all made it out and were army crawling across the roof when the House dean stuck her head out of the window and told us to come down, adding that she hoped to see us tomorrow,” he continued. “We ran into her at dinner…”
Last year’s River Run posed its own unique challenge. Though first-years were regranted swipe access to the River Houses—which some argued detracted from the excitement of breaking and entering to secure a shot—downpouring rain seemingly complicated the experience.
However, “no one really cared,” Flores said. “Everyone just powered through, and it made it extra fun.”
However, Zion Dixon ’26 was not pleased by the College’s loosening of restrictions, recalling his experience as an upperclassman during last year’s River Run. “Part of what made River Run so fun was that it was illegal,” Dixon explained. “Securitas was literally chasing us, that we had to climb multiple fences, multiple gates, climb through windows—it was hard to get into the houses.”
When Dixon and his roommate learned that first-years would be allowed to walk right through the gates, they decided to take matters into their own hands, determined to preserve what they saw as the true spirit of River Run. “Me and my roommate basically went to the Winthrop gate—the big gate that you walk through to get to the river—and we closed it shut forcefully,” Dixon recalled. “We were holding it closed so that first-years just couldn’t come in. And so then they started climbing over it.”
Despite Securitas intervening in their efforts, Dixon and his roommate were satisfied knowing they had made things more challenging for the first-years while staying true to the tradition: “We got to go back to our room with the satisfaction of, that’s how River Run is supposed to be,” he commented.
According to Dixon, moments like these are what make River Run a cherished memory for blocking groups throughout their time at Harvard. Others share his appreciation for the sense of chaos and camaraderie that make this event a unique moment and a milestone for students who are entering the final stage of their first year at the College.
“I remember boosting [my roommates] over the Quincy fence and a proctor peeping their head out of their room and shaking their head at us,” Nate Marinaccio ’27 explained, reminiscing on his blocking group’s River Run festivities last year in the rainstorm. “After I boosted [them], I walked around the corner and a Securitas officer sped walk past me, and I heard on the radio, ‘They’re climbing the walls on DeWolfe, we need security there now.’”
It is a common sentiment among these students that River Run and Housing Day are some of the most memorable experiences both as a first-year and an upperclassmen. They are a perfect reminder of Harvard’s rich community as grades converge to celebrate the next phase for first-years. While these traditions make for unforgettable memories, they also come with a few classic pitfalls: “I remember waking up the next morning and beelining it for Gatorade from CVS,” Marinaccio recalled.
In addition to Marinaccio’s advice on morning sustenance, Climaco ended with a cautionary note about a frequent mistake made during River Run: “I would be wary of not losing your phones,” he said. “We had two losses of phones on our trip, and that set us back, I would say, an hour in total, just looking for them. It’s a dangerous night.”
Mia Wilcox ’28 (mwilcox@college.harvard.edu) hopes everyone had a joyful River Run and a lucky Housing Day.