I teach Expository Writing to first-years on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule, which means that every year I have two sections that meet in the immediate aftermath of River Run and Dorm Storm. In these sections—and in the ones leading up to them—I hear one word on repeat: Quad-ed.
In preparation for being placed into upperclassmen houses, first-years speak of “being Quad-ed” with dread. In the aftermath of these assignments being announced on the morning of Housing Day, they say it with tears in their eyes. Their classmates come into class shrieking about placements in Quincy or Adams or Eliot, while the Cabots and Curriers and Pfohos sit in shrunken silence, throwing daggers.
Why? I ask myself every year. Why?
Every year I deliverfa the same assurances that the Quad is no farther from most classroom buildings than Dunster or Mather. (One student Google Mapped this and confirmed it.) Every year I talk about the beautiful neighborhoods that surround the Quad and the superior food available along Mass Ave and in Porter Square. And every year it doesn’t matter. The students take this information in and give me indulging smiles and remain unconvinced. Maybe because I’m supposed to be teaching students how to make convincing arguments, I find my own failure here troubling. So I’ve given this why question quite a bit of thought; and here’s my answer:
The Quad holds the old Radcliffe Houses—Radcliffe, which was long referred to as Harvard’s “sister school”: Leia to Harvard’s Luke. Radcliffe women weren’t allowed into the Lamont stacks until 1967, and the two colleges didn’t fully merge until 1999. And yet there is still a sense that the River Houses are the real Harvard, while the Quad is faux or approximate.
In other words, the understood relation between The Quad and The River among Harvard first-years corresponds precisely to the understood relation between female and male in western society: in both cases, the former is derivative. Second. Less-than. Is it any coincidence, then, that The Radcliffe Quadrangle was the one-time campus for all the women who Harvard would not admit?
This history is implicit even in our conjugation of the statements, “I was Quad-ed” and “I got the River.” The first, any writing instructor will point out to you, is passive. The second is active. So, folks placed in River Houses achieved something, and folks placed in Quad Houses had something done to them. What’s more patriarchal than that?!
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This idea is not mine, and it’s not new. In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir (1949) described the western view that man is default and woman is other, with woman existing only in relation — and secondary — to man. This is the view that gave rise to elite institutions such as Harvard, Columbia, and Swarthmore having sister schools that provided top-shelf educations but were seen and talked about as not quite the real thing. It is the view that keeps us using language like, Girls can be strong, too! And Girls are just as smart as boys! This apologetic, relativistic language seems outdated for 2023, no? I mean: Why define girls in relation to boys at all? Why limit ourselves to thinking in terms of boys and girls in the first place?
If we wouldn’t use that language, then why would we talk about “being Quad-ed” but not “being Mathered?” (And speaking of misogynistic history, let’s talk about that guy: Increase and his son Cotton led the charge into the Salem witch trials that resulted in the executions of 14 women and five men.) Why would we continue, in 2023, to talk as though “Quaded” students have been relegated to a pseudo-campus far from the real Harvard? In fact, am I reading too much into students’ reactions if I observe that “being Quad-ed” seems to be received like a year-late reversal (correction?) of their original admissions decisions?
When we talk about the Quad as far from the real Harvard, as a disappointment, not only are we playing into frankly obnoxious, elitist Harvard-speak; we’re perpetuating misogynistic narratives, too. We’re keeping them alive under the surface without even realizing it by slipping into inherited language whose meanings we have not examined.
So here’s my proposal, as you nurse your Housing Day hangovers and come to terms with your new homes: let’s get rid of this language of being Quad-ed. Let’s embrace the good food and the beautiful walk and the sunny singles the Quad has to offer. Not only that: Let’s embrace those good feminist vibes left behind by our foresisters in that objectively impressive space.
Say it with me now: I got the Quad. Pfuck yes. I got the Quad.
Kelsey Quigley ’09 (kelsey_quigley@harvard.edu) is a clinical psychologist and Preceptor in the Harvard College Writing Program. Her course is called Gender & Mental Health. As an undergrad, she lived one year in a corner room in Dunster before transferring to Pfoho.