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For Sarita James, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, life at Lowell Houselies at the heart of her Harvard experience. "The House Committee does a wonderful job building solidarity," she says. "Every spring we have a performance of the 1812 Overture in the courtyard. The chemistry tutors explode balloons for the drum crashes, and I play in the kazoo section." And if it hadn't been for the help of the House chef, she might never have gone back to volunteer at the University Lutheran Church homeless shelter. "The first time I cooked breakfast, the pancakes burned," she recalls. "But the dining hall opened up for a 6 a.m. lesson, and the chef taught me how to make them nice and fluffy."
From that firm base in Lowell House, James, a computer-science concentrator, has ranged across a wide spectrum of activities, many with a scientific bent. She was thrilled when Harry Lewis, dean of the College, agreed to be one of the readers for her thesis. "The opportunity to get to know professors and administrators makes the University much smaller," she says. She has also participated in committees representing women's interests in science and helped edit student scientific publications. Through the Experimentors program at Phillips Brooks House, she has brought her enthusiasm for science into Cambridge classrooms.
Of equal importance has been her involvement in ethnic affairs. James has been senior editor of Harvard-Radcliffe South Asia Journal and served on the steering committee for the Harvard-Radcliffe Asian American Association. As cochair of the student advisory committee to the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, she leads students representing ethnic and minority groups on campus. And she founded Interethnic Service Day, during which various ethnic organizations send members to work together on service programs in Boston. Taking its message to heart, she devoted last summer entirely to public service: she traveled to Calcutta to work as a volunteer at Mother Teresa's orphanage.
Having survived her "senior spring," James will leave Harvard to make her new home in Africa as a volunteer, in Boston as a journalist, or in Geneva as an information technology consultant to the UN. Until then she won't slow down, as the Crimson discovered. When an editor called to interview her in spring term for an article on Harvard's busiest students, James was out.
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