Last semester, as I was talking to a super senior about her time at Harvard, a notable void emerged where her experience and mine misaligned. Reminiscing about first-year year traditions, she recounted opening days and reveled in the nostalgia of all the classics: Berg, Love Story, the Yard, the Igloo — Wait, the Igloo? That’s where our similarities stopped. What the hell was the Igloo? I had never heard of it before.
The senior explained that most weekends of her first semester at Harvard, she and her friends would load onto the Quad shuttle and walk to a claustrophobic space in the basement of Pfoho House that, due to its propensity to accumulate human condensation, had at some point been dubbed “the Igloo.” Occasionally, if first-years got bored of the Igloo, she said, they would go party at the Cabot Aquarium instead.
My first semester of freshmen year looked remarkably different. I had been to the Quad once — to try to locate the rock climbing wall, which to my chagrin, I realized was closed upon arrival. After all, Covid-19 restrictions banned any gatherings of over ten people on Harvard’s campus. Even if I had known where or what the Igloo was, the lingering effects of the pandemic would have made it impossible to take advantage of the space.
As mask mandates and testing restrictions have loosened and lifted, the tangibles of the pandemic are receding further into the past. We are moving toward normalcy — that elusive place we spent so much of the pandemic reaching toward — only to realize it doesn’t really exist. While the pandemic may be leaving us, its shadow remains. It hangs over us, or more aptly, hovers beneath us, continuing to haunt and crystallize in little and surprising ways.
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When upperclassmen started descending on dorms on Housing Day, first-years frantically texted each other wondering why so many were being housed in the Quad.
“We totally thought it was a joke when we saw the polar bears walking to Holworthy from the window on Housing Day,” said one future Pforzheimer resident. However, her blockmate added, “When the polar bear knocked on our door, we knew it was over.”
When the blocking group across the hall was placed into Cabot House, they all suspected it was a massive prank. But indeed, a significantly larger portion of the class of 2025, as compared to other classes, were placed in Quad housing. While the College has not published official information about how upperclassmen housing was decided, students have speculated that the trend is because more first-years had to be placed in Pfoho, Cabot and Courier to accommodate the amount of transfers of sophomores and juniors living in the Quad — and the unusually large size of the class of 2025.
While many students were initially disappointed, most have quickly become enthusiastic and hopeful about what they describe as “a culture shift” to the Quad, given the amount of students that will be living there.
“I think there’s a ton of stigma surrounding the Quad,” said Rick Li ’25 of Cabot House. “Sure, the walks in the snow will be rough. But at the end of the day, everyone in the quad is already forming a community, and that’s what really matters to me.”
Future [Future HOUSE resident] Corinne Furey ’25 summed it up nicely: “The quad is the new river. Mark my words.”
While a Quad takeover may be in store next fall — and perhaps a return to the Igloo, as well — the shift in first-year social spaces since pre-pandemic remains.
Particularly for the class of 2025, . For some students, Tasty Burger became a popular spot for students who, especially early on, had nowhere else to go. A current manager at Tasty Burger commented on the huge surge in students renting out the space since returning in the fall. “People are renting out the place on Tuesdays,” she exclaimed. “It’s impossible to book.”
Over Visitas weekend, as prospective freshmen toured Harvard’s campus, some students rented out the basement of Tasty Burger in Harvard Square, hosting a “VisiTasty” party to welcome incoming freshmen to Harvard.
Tasty Burger is not the only off-campus spot where students have found themselves hanging out. Alexi Carolan ’24 said when she was living inHarvard housing during the pandemic, many students turned to outside spaces to hang out. “Because we couldn’t hang out inside, we had to find other places to spend time, and weirdly the River became the place to be for a while,” she remarked. This trend continued for the class of 2025 — the Igloo might not have been open, but the River always was. In the warm weeks of the fall, clumps of freshmen often gathered by the water to socialize.
As the students who knew Harvard before Covid-19 approach graduation, traditions might be lost. But in the post-pandemic world, new traditions have formed. As Kate Griem ’25 put it, from comps to party spaces, “it’s an exciting way to rethink the way things are done.” As the future Quad residents expressed, the lingering legacies of the pandemic might indeed have a positive impact on the Harvard student experience.
Proof Schubert Reed ‘25(proofschubertreed@college.harvard.edu) will be living in the Quad.