The Crimson Key Society was founded in 1948 in partnership with the Harvard Athletic Association, as its goal was to accommodate visiting athletic teams. From meeting the teams upon their arrival to touring them around Harvard, the Crimson Key Society welcomed and served the student-athletes of the Ivy League.

Our organization expanded quickly in the three years after its inception, and during the fourth year, the Crimson Key Society split into three different subcommittees. One committee carried on the partnership with the Harvard Athletic Association, while the other two expanded out of the student-athlete sphere. These two committees were the Orientation Committee, which welcomed first-years, organized mixers, and gave campus tours, and the Undergraduate Schools Committee, which recruited high school students and housed them when they came to visit.

The Crimson Key Society has changed a lot since its first five years. Although we no longer have committees that specialize in certain areas and are no longer involved specifically in the student-athlete experience, we continue to carry on our mission of welcoming first-years, tourists, and future college students.

Each year, we arrive at Harvard one week early to assist the Dean of Students Office with First-Year Orientation Week. Our internal Harvard duties include checking in First-Years and giving them their keys, organizing the headlining events of Orientation, like the First-Year Fling and the First-Year Talent Show, as well as helping out with First-Year/Junior Family Weekends and the Arts First Festival. We also perform outreach to underserved Boston middle schools, an initiative we call Project TEACH, and it comes in two forms. The first is when we visit their school to speak about higher education, and the second is when they visit Harvard and we give them tours and eat with them in Annenberg. Both forms emphasize the same mission, though: to express how accessible higher education really is! 

Crimson Key Society is, at its very core, dedicated to service. However, we have categorized ourselves as a social service organization because of how tight-knit our community is. We make this a point in all of our comp processes: while the service we do may have initially brought us together, it is the bonds that we create during and outside of it when we become united as one.

However, in the past, the Crimson Key Society has been reprimanded for leaning too socially instead of leaning into service more. Having been on CKS’s Executive Board for all the years I was eligible to hold a position, I know a lot about CKS’s history and can recognize that in the past (5 years ago), we may have emphasized the social aspect of Key more than the service aspect. However, I truly believe that through the deliberate efforts that the past 3 Executive Boards have made to even out the social and service aspects, we have been becoming more and more service oriented.


Yet, this internal gradual change that we have acheived is slow to expand to the entire student body. Because of this, I sought to learn more about how an organization’s reputation can be changed not only among the organization itself, but also among the college campus community. An organization’s public relations is extremely important for those that want to continue their longevity as a unit and continue to perform and serve our community the best they can.