Dear Harvard College Students,
As we eagerly anticipate your return to campus this spring, we would like to share a few updates regarding the upcoming semester. I hope that safely sitting in your childhood bedroom as your friends at other colleges returned to in-person instruction last school year provided you with ample time to reflect on the unchanging mission of Harvard College: to promote the socio-emotional development and in-person education of the future citizen-leaders of tomorrow. In accordance, starting on January 23, 2022, we are changing our motto from Veritas to Veri Turnt!!
We learned from careful contact tracing in the fall that allowing you to breathe directly into each others’ mouths for an hour at a time does, to our surprise, spread disease. To prevent further mealtime transmission, our dining policy will be both “grab and go” and “first come, first serve”.That's right baby, it's no longer Red's Best Catch, it's survival of Red's Fittest! The doors will open at 7 am EST, we hope to see you all there! HUDS members are hard at work, and are being trained to place things like the Canaday Cockroaches, saliva from positive covid tests, and love into their meals. As a reminder, please wash your hands before all meals, as serving utensils have been removed to prevent viral particle accumulation.
Other updates will change how we interact with one another and our house communities; bringing us too close together in these dark times. From now on, Lowell tea will be served baby-bird style, Crimson EMS will provide free mouth-to-mouth to any student, and Mather lather will continue unmodified.
Additionally, Incest Fest, a beloved, ancient tradition here at Harvard College, will be brought back in all its former glory. To truly enable all students to have their best Harvard experience (and as an incidental benefit, to develop as much herd immunity to the omicron variant as possible) we will be expanding Incest Fest to all houses!
We will need each of you to do your part, and I thank you in advance for helping to contribute to a great semester. Please remember that all of these policies and all of those which preceded them are based on the most recent research and public health guidelines, and are definitely not based on us wanting to be Not Like Other Colleges.
I look forward to seeing you on campus in the coming weeks.
Yours in YOLO,
By: Katherinsine O'Dairy
Dean of Students
