March-April 2005 > John Harvard's Journal

Fun's Expediter

Zac Corker

Harvard News Office

Styled "Harvard’s Fun Czar" by Reuters and CNN, Zac Corker ’04 sits in his University Hall office and explains that his actual job title — "special assistant to the dean for social programming" — is far more sober. A popular undergraduate whose classmates elected him a class marshal in their senior year, Corker became a social lion, though, by helping launch www.hahvahdparties.com, an on-line guide to weekend revelry in the Houses. As a senior, he helped with social planning on the Mather House Council and Senior Class Committee; when some College events ran up against city rules, he noticed that there wasn’t much support available from the College.

"I wrote a letter suggesting creating a position to assist students with campus-wide social events," Corker says, "and I volunteered to fill it." He started work in the fall: setting up the mega-tailgate party before The Game and a successful interhouse dodgeball tournament in December (there was even a decanal entry). Corker will join the Peace Corps this fall, but the job he invented will continue as a presidential fellowship, filled annually by a new Harvard graduate. "Doing this depends on having a connection with the students," he explains. "I could do it one more year, but after that I wouldn’t know any of the kids. Pretty soon, I’d be 26 and thinking like an administrator."