Leverett "Chief" Howard Georgi '68 is on a crusade.

In this House master's arsenal: an Olympus Camedia C-2020-Z digital camera, a Linux web server and a database of information about each of his Leverittes. Students who bump into Georgi at a monkey-bread open house or the '80s dance often end up in pictures--digital photos posted within 15 minutes after events on the House website, which averages about 250 visitors per day. The some 450 Leverittes also regularly find Georgi popping up in their inboxes. "I know I send too many e-mails," he grins.

On a wired campus, Georgi is battling to make the 70-year-old notion of "House community" digitally savvy. Telephone calls and snail mail no longer suffice to marshal Net generation undergraduates into the community. "I suppose that all of these House things used to be done with posters and sign-up lists in the dining hall, but I can't imagine running the House without e-mail and the House webpage," Georgi muses. "And I'm trying to train the administration that it is useful to send the House [electronic] files instead of piles of papers."

Though all 12 undergraduate Houses are linked by the same basic Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) network infrastructure and support, inhabitants say not all residential communities are virtually equal.

Among the Harvard digerati, Georgi is the cutting edge: he actively seeks to make the newest technology part of the House experience. To Lowell House computer science concentrator Paul A. Gusmorino '02--who bemoans his own House's technological dark age but lists Leverett as one of Harvard's most Net savvy communities--the Internet revolution has already transformed other aspects of student life, even if the residential experience hasn't quite caught up. "Today, student groups define themselves by their e-mail lists," he says.

But to the College administration, the technological cutting edge sometimes masks what is really a

"bleeding edge"--technology that looks exciting but drains budgets. The cost and risk of ultra-new technologies necessitate administrative caution in both academics and residential life, explains Associate Dean of the College Georgene B. Herschbach.

Yet a problem remains: if students plan their day-to-day activities via the Internet, and their House community doesn't communicate with them via such technology, then Houses won't be a large part of their daily lives. So Georgi's crusade begins where physical House interactions end: how to use technology to extend and reinforce the face-to-face ties formed within the brick-and-mortar Houses.

The popularization of Internet technologies over the past four years has permitted each individual House to shape its own solutions--or ignore the question almost entirely. But the increased technological expectations of each incoming class threaten to outpace Harvard-speed.

If that happens, the College's apprehension of treading the "bleeding edge" could degrade Houses into mere living quarters unless they invest in tools to transform themselves into Net-connected communities.

Re-Imagined "Community"

The fall of 1996 brought two revolutions to Harvard's Houses: randomization and the full roll-out of automatic dorm-room computer network connections.

The two moves crossed paths in a way that the House system is still sorting out.

With full randomization, first-years were no longer allowed to select an upper-class residence based on preferences that often included House reputations and interest-clusters. Since Houses couldn't be intentional communities, many students turned their attention to other College-wide affiliations outside of their assigned House: teams, clubs and non-residential friendships.

The simultaneous increase in Internet popularity offered a useful tool for building and maintaining such cross-campus connections: e-mail.

"Undergraduate student organizations of all types are easier to organize, recruit and manage in an era of mailing lists," writes Kevin S. Davis '98, now coordinator of residential computing at FAS Computer Services, in an e-mail message. "I find the students I talk with [today] are more actively engaged in extracurricular activities than ever before."