On Nov. 11, The Herald reported that residential theme and program house leaders will no longer be allowed to select their residents, with the current system being replaced by a lottery starting next year. As current and former presidents of Harambee House — “a place where Black scholars and allies put forth continuous personal work and heartfelt effort” — we’ve been fielding many questions over the future of our house. For the most part, we are no less mystified than anyone else. The University’s decision was made unilaterally by the Office of Residential Life without the consultation of any program nor house leaders. Implementing a randomized lottery system threatens the very purpose of these student-created communities, stripping us of our ability to engage the most devoted applicants who allow houses like Harambee to be meaningful, active spaces.
Harambee is a program house focused on Black life. To quote our constitution, “The House is not an exercise in separatism, it is a celebration of the people and culture of the African Diaspora.” Many of these houses are decades old. They are places steeped in traditions with rich histories of self-governance. We have constitutions, guidelines, traditions and rubrics that dictate our membership criteria as opposed to merely passing fancies and playing favorites. Program houses were made for students by students. They are more similar to Greek life — which is unaffected by these changes — than theme housing. While theme houses are University-driven, program houses and Greek life are both led and founded — in the case of Greek life, chartered — by students.
Our selectiveness is not a product of our intention. We are limited not only by our number of beds for in-house membership but also by the amount of total members we can accept, only 30 slots per year, including both prospective in-house and out-of-house members. Harambee is a house that deeply values service and seniority. Our internal lottery is as follows: Board Members, returning seniors, new seniors, returning juniors, new juniors, sophomores. Per our constitution, when selecting new members, we prioritize students who have previously attended events and who care about the larger Black community. This ensures that members will effectively maintain the spirit of the organization.
A lottery with no oversight from current members — no application at all, as far as we understand — destroys the foundation of program house communities. Removing our independent application and recruitment processes means fundamentally dismantling our ability to retain members with real interest in our mission. Slowly but surely this will erode the spirit of our organization and turn Harambee into any other dorm.
To add insult to injury, every other student-run organization on campus — clubs, Greek life, club sports — gets to determine how members are admitted to their group. Why should program houses be any different? There are plenty of methods besides a lottery to resolve concerns over fairness in the application process, including requiring anonymized applications, directly supervising deliberations, working with student leaders to eliminate bias and hosting applications on the ResLife portal itself. We are more than willing to work with ResLife to resolve both concerns regarding fairness and our right to maintain the spirit of our house like we always have.
It is the students who keep Harambee alive, not the institution. In 2019, Harambee House was on the brink of extinction, but a group of devoted student leaders worked to recruit new members. Those students knew its importance as a hub for Black life on campus. We’ve been incredibly lucky to enjoy flourishing membership ever since. With a decline in Black undergraduate enrollment rates last year and large-scale attempts to erase Black history at the national level, Harambee’s place at Brown has never been more important. It’s a home and a safe place. From hosting our own block parties and friendsgiving dinners to opening our spaces to other organizations across campus, our house is centered on the students we serve and who have served us. We display art made by alumni and current students on our walls and have a historical archive of documents from our 1993 founding in our closet. Our history has been passed down because we are invested enough to tell it.
People often wonder why our house is named Harambee. Given to us by our founders more than thirty years ago, harambee is a Swahili word roughly meaning “togetherness.” It could also be translated as “all pull together," the Harambee motto. Today, we entreat you to pull together with us to protect our ability to foster and create community.
Despite the fear and uncertainty, Harambee is not going anywhere. None of the program houses are, as long as there are students who care enough about their missions. We hope you’ll be one of those students for whichever house interests you, whatever the outcome of this lottery may be.
Vanya Noel ’25.5 is the former Harambee House President and current Senior Advisor and can be reached at vanya_noel@brown.edu. Shamariah Smith ’27 is the current Harambee House Co-President and can be reached at shamariah_smith@brown.edu. Madison Duff ’27 is the current Harambee House Co-President and can be reached at madison_duff@brown.edu. Please send responses to this op-ed to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
