The Gender-Neutral Cafe: Harvard’s Utopian Social Space

By The Editors

This spring, the Undergraduate Council announced its plans to raise funds for the purchase of a building to create a student community centre. While their initial intentions for the building were unclear, they hoped to address the lack of “open,” “democratic,” and “inclusive” social space on campus by purchasing a space of their own. After realizing the plan was too silly even by their standards, the UC pulled its support in the spring, leaving an ambitious group of progressives to raise money on their own to purchase a building, most likely the Democracy Centre at 45 Mt. Auburn Street.

The Democracy Centre placed the building on the market in the spring and spurned multiple full-price offers from several student social clubs lest another space in the Square become a bas­tion of privilege rather than liberalism. Over the course of the summer, the campaign, now labelled “Our Student Centre,” raised the astounding sum of $8,000. After expenses, they have $700 of the $6 million they hope to raise.

While the possibility of several wealthy donors supporting the project is not out of the question, the campaign’s prospects look bleak at best. Harvard’s large donors are primarily interested in improv­ing the quality of education offered its students rather than providing them another venue for drinking coffee. It goes without saying that the current economic climate is unaccommodating to fundraising for an unnecessary and unplanned student centre, particularly these days when Harvard for once can truthfully tell donors that the university needs money. Furthermore, wealthy donors are generally older, making them less likely to support a progressive project and less sensitive to the needs of cur­rent Harvard students. Most of these donors were here before the SAT and the tireless efforts of the admissions office turned Harvard’s population into a bunch of dweebs who couldn’t socialize in the world’s greatest social space. Unless they could use G-Chat, of course.

This reality points to the sad irony of the capital campaign: Harvard students who claim they are too busy to be social, lack basic social skills, and may not even enjoy socializing are campaign­ing ardently for social space as if it were a mortally important cause. Social space, social causes, social studies, socioeconomics, social science, social networking, social inequality, social respon­sibility, and socialism are all more important to them than actual socializing. Students in support of new social space constantly point to the fact that the Lamont Library Café is the most popular social space on campus as evidence of a dearth of alternatives. They ignore the fact that Lamont is popular not because it is unique, but because its location in a library lets them feel like they might be working, even if they are not. Harvard is blessed with social spaces in each of its twelve houses, not to mention one of America’s great football stadiums, plenty of nearby bars, large suites all over campus, and dozens of excellent eateries. The acquisition of a dilapidated 6,000 square-foot build­ing on Mt. Auburn Street seems unlikely to motivate Harvard students to be any more social than they are.

It’s hardly surprising that students have decided that lack of social space, not social skills, ex­plains Harvard’s dearth of fellowship and fun. After all, why admit that one is incapable of speak­ing to the opposite sex about anything other than shopping week, midterms, or finals when one can complain that the Lamont Café is too small, the Queen’s Head too far away, Wu Tang Clan too outdated, the football team too bad, the College too strict on drinking because they no longer pay students’ keg bills, the couple of real parties too exclusive and boring, and the people who go to the real parties too racist, classist, and sexist?

But none of those claims is true. Harvard social life is the direct product of Harvard students, and providing the student body with “multipurpose rooms,” a “kitchen,” a “café,” a “lounge,” “confer­ence rooms,” a “theatre,” and a “game room” will not solve Harvard’s social problems. The campus currently abounds with these kinds of facilities. The student centre campaign seems to be almost exclusively focused on the fact that their kitchen and café, unlike the kitchen in your entryway and the dozen of cafés within a mile of your dorm room, will be “independent, student-driven, inclusive, gender-neutral, [and] centralized.” Apparently no one wants to hang out in a Junior Common Room because there are portraits of dead white men on the walls, no one wants to eat a slice at Pinnochio’s because it is not run by Harvard students, and no one wants to party in a single-sex suite because of its sexist constitution. But if there is a place that avoids these obviously glaring problems, Harvard students will be able to have fun there.

The student centre campaign also suffers from an ambiguity of mission: either they actually think Harvard needs a non-gendered kitchen (doesn’t the co-op count?), or they’ve proffered a neatly progressive and inspiring excuse for what they really want: a place to party. While a political­ly correct café is not the easiest cause for which to fundraise, purchasing a party house is probably even more difficult. Admitting that they really just want a place to talk about shopping period, but with a warm screwdriver in hand, may win the lagging capital campaign more support among the student body, if not among potential donors. But it would not change the fundamental infecun­dity of their efforts. There is already enough social space to hold all the socializing that goes on at Harvard. In fact, there is probably far too much. Let alone selling coal to Newcastle; building social space for Harvard students is like selling coal to Cambridge.

“Independent, student-driven, inclusive, gender-neutral, [and] centralized.” It sounds like a perfect place for a party. A utopia, if you will. But Saint Thomas More must have known Harvard students quite well; for the perfect place, he formed the name from the Greek words οu τόπος, no place. That’s where Harvard students can have fun: nowhere.