Story of Us
The history of social organizations has been marked with much controversy at Harvard College. Citing reasons for sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and many more, former University President Drew G. Faust announced sanctions on unrecognized social groups in 2016. These policies would bar members from holding leadership positions in on-campus organizations, becoming varsity captains, and receiving College endorsements for postgraduate fellowships. While these sanctions have since been uplifted, there is still much silent discourse amongst Harvard students on the controversies of joining social organizations.
For these reasons, I have decided to keep the name of my social organization anonymous. I refer to my social organization as "ABC."
ABC was founded several decades ago under the purpose of fostering and developing meaningful friendships. We do so by holding numerous social and community service events every semester. The structure of ABC consists of an executive board and graduate board. We are constantly in communication to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness our membership experience.
The most important process for us is our membership admissions. It happens annually and takes several months to complete. It is during this time when prospective members learn about ABC, its personal significance to the existing members, and how we operate on a daily basis. Doing so is necessary to prepare the incoming membership to become stewards of our space - everyone must be able to represent ABC the same way our President would.
The 2019-2020 academic year at Harvard College was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This created a significant gap in institutional memory for ABC because the older cohort of membership (admitted previously to the 2019-2020 academic year) did not have adequate opportunities to fully acclimate the new cohort of membership (admitted during 2019-2020 academic year) to our traditions and culture in comparison to previous years. The following academic year of 2020-2021 was held virtually, prompting ABC to skip our admissions process entirely. This could have unforeseen consequences to the functionalities and cultures for ABC because these unprecedented circumstances have made it impossible for in-person institutional memories to be preserved during these two years.
It is of the utmost importance to ABC that our institutional memory is preserved so that our organization is not led in directions contradicting our core historic values and the ways that we have served our purpose in past years. This is why I am pursuing my action research question: what are the best practices for ABC to build institutional memory?
Exploring this will provide effective strategies to close the gaps in our institutional memory created by the COVID-19 pandemic and guide future leadership of ABC by demonstrating the ways we have been run historically.
