Today, one of my House tutors held his office hours not from behind his desk, but from behind the information table at Occupy Harvard.  You know what I have to say to that?

Rock on.

The Yard’s tent city has become the subject of such hot debate over the last few weeks, but for all the wrong reasons.  I’ve heard a lot of students complain about the “inconvenience” of having to show their IDs to get into the Yard, or of having to choose an open gate because their regular route of travel has been cut off. It seems that students have pushed more of their energies into finding alternate walking routes through the Yard than into thinking about why Occupy Harvard has been constructed in the first place.

Every day in class, we as students are encouraged to ask questions, challenge conventions, and think of ways in which we can change our world. This is exactly what Occupy Harvard has aimed to do; yet, it has been received by the Harvard community in an embarrassing and rather sad manner. The Occupy movement is worldwide and has opened countless opportunities for debates, panels, speakers, and education. This is a prime opportunity to discuss the situation at hand, no matter which side of the issues you’re on.

Instead, the student body has polarized between two extremes, to the point where it seems like if you’re not with Occupy Harvard, you’re expected to hate it. I’m not shocked that this movement has made its way to Harvard, but I’m pretty surprised by how it’s been dealt with by the administration.

Faced with a tent city and a sterling reputation to uphold, Harvard locked down the Yard and then sent out an email to all students describing why it all simply had to be that way. In a place where we should be encouraged to challenge and question what’s put in front of us, I think it’s pretty embarrassing that the administration would rather put a lid on the whole issue. I won’t pretend to have all of the answers to the current Occupy Harvard situation, but here’s my short list of what I think the movement could and should have led to:

1. Discussion between administrators and protesters about the issues at hand.
2. Invitations to outspoken economists, politicians, Occupy leaders etc. to visit campus and lecture on their views.
3. Panels of prominent speakers on BOTH sides of the issues to engage students in debate about what has become a global movement.
4. Collaboration between undergraduate departments (perhaps Economics and Government?) to encourage student-run debates.

Today I had to explain where it can be found to a deaf couple for whom I had to draw a detailed map and pantomime the directions. My favorite tourist encounter was with an elderly woman who streamlined toward me as I was passing out the March issue of the Voice. She wanted to know how to get to Memorial Church but proceeded to interrogate me about dorms, dining plans, tuition costs, my social life, and even the profile of Harvard’s minority population. Seriously. At some point I kindly gave her the tip to go and Google what she wanted to know because, frankly, the internet knows more about this school than I do.

To think that this weekend I am going to be prone to these kinds of attacks by a clueless hoard of a thousand admitted students except they will want to know where the party is and not how to find the nearest bathroom. My prefrosh won’t know what she got herself into when I hand her a map and give her a pat on the back to send her on her way because I ain’t dealing with it no more.

When Harvard first announced that it had changed its calendar to make room for a month-long winter break, I rejoiced. A whole month? Of doing like, nothing? That’s heaven. No longer would we envy our friends at state schools and other schools who had a nice three weeks of winter vacay because we got a whopping four and a half.

J-term, at least for me, promised to be a time of uber productivity, filled with internship applications, course shopping, career pondering, book reading (for pleasure), on top of seeing friends and family. Did it prove to be productive? Not really. This graph painfully but accurately describes my month of January:

Yeah. Something like that. Needless to say, filling out Dean Hammond’s survey which was sent out to the entire student body in order to evaluate time spent during J-term, was pretty simple for me. What did I do during the break? I…relaxed. Check. Saw friends. Check. Kindofsortof thought about internships. Check. Annnd yeah…I think that’s about it. The other options made me feel pretty worthless (volunteer positions? internship? what?).

So what was the problem? One solution that I put forth in my 500-word-ish-long spiel in the survey was obviously to provide students with more options for staying on campus during J-term. I mean, as much as I love my family, staying with them for 4.5 weeks is just begging for someone’s blood pressure to skyrocket. Plus, who doesn’t enjoy frolicking about in a kind of empty campus? Spending J-term on campus with more student-led programming or offering quirky not-for-credit classes would be a fantastic option for students. See MIT’s Independent Activities Period, which is a program that has been successfully running for four decades! MIT students are given the option to take either for-credit or not-for-credit activities during the month of January. You can take a “Art and Architecture Tour of the Boston Public Library” or attend the “32nd Annual Science Fiction Marathon” or take an introductory language course in Japanese. Such diverse programming without the pressure of grades or credit would give students a truly relaxing yet intellectually stimulating winter break. It would definitely be a nice change from the unfortunate amounts of Hulu and junk food I consumed over J-term.

What do you think? Was J-term fruitful for you? What suggestions do you have?