Sometimes, you decide to go to a petting zoo in Straus courtyard. And sometimes, you feel like you’re in the petting zoo in Straus courtyard. A week or so ago, we arrived at the pop-up zoo expecting to pet some bunnies and goats, only to find a stagnant group of tourists clustered around the animals. We expected them to pull out their cameras and point them at the oft-photographed brick dorms scattered across the yard, but instead, they turned toward us.
If we had been doing something remotely interesting besides watching pigs tear up dirt, it would not have merited a second thought. But the irony of going to a petting zoo only to be observed in such an eerily zoo-like manner was too much to pass up.
Students’ interactions with tourists range from being asked to take BeReals—always appreciated—to being pressured to give impromptu tours around their dorm rooms—not as appreciated. And while most tourists who roam the Yard do not violate students’ boundaries, just snapping the occasional Instagram picture or rubbing the toe, some visitors’ curiosity about Harvard encroaches on private space.
Sofia Chen ’26 recalled when two women repeatedly pressured her to show them inside her room. “They said, ‘Let us into some room, anyone’s, we just want to see what the rooms are like,’” Chen explained.
The line between tourists being invasive and curious is a thin one. It is perhaps unfair to criticize tourists for wanting to learn more about Harvard and its students, but their curiosity about Harvard and its students quickly bleeds into the personal space of students, particularly first-years, who may not want every part of their lives observed.
“I don’t know why you would want to see where we live,” said Chen. She, along with many of her peers, sees the primary purpose of the dorms as residential. She expressed the self-consciousness that many first-years feel about tourists infringing on their space: are dorms in the Yard first-years’ homes, or just brick spectacles?
Stepping away from the Yard and making the trek down Garden Street to Harvard’s Radcliffe Quadrangle, a certain quietness inhabits the space due to the lack of students who frequent the Quad during the daytime and the lack of tourists in this part of Cambridge. With no Harvard Shops or singers on street corners, the tranquility of the area is often cited by its residents as the Quad’s best-kept secret.
Indeed, with no tourists, the Quad almost feels like a different campus, lacking the pulse of visitors eager to inquire about and perceive Harvard students. Cabot House resident Caroline Baynard ’25 this aura as “definitely positive. It feels more peaceful and more separate from the idea of Harvard University as this tourist destination rather than a home environment.”
Contrasting her Quad experience with her time in the Yard, Baynard said, “when you’re trying to pass through a crowd of people at the statue, and you just need to get to your lecture at the Science Center, it can be pretty frustrating.” Yet she also views the presence of tourists as a “reminder that the little pieces of campus that I overlook are also part of this history and culture that is so well-regarded internationally across communities really far away from ours.”
Some students expressed that it can feel like an honor to be approached by a tourist keen to learn about your class schedule or catch a peak at a first-floor dorm room.
Indeed, there is a bit of an insiders’ game to interacting with tourists in the Yard. Whether giggling at the general naivety of the Yard’s tourists or joining together in a sort of in-group game of “who can spot the outsider” as tourists latch proudly onto John Harvard’s bronze toe, students undeniably fall victim to a larger spirit of elitism present in the student population.
If groups of strangers from around the world can put an entire student body on a pedestal with ease, perhaps it is time for us to begin questioning the assumptions we make in return.
Sachi Laumas ’26 (slaumas@college.harvard.edu) just wants a tourist to ask her to take their BeReal.Clara Corcoran ’25 (claracorcoran@college.havrard.edu) sends a personal invitation to tour you around the Quad.