City Criticizes Harvard For New Housing Policy

Concern that Harvard is making policy decisions that affect Cambridge residents without consulting the City Council prompted the nine-member legislative body to pass two resolutions Monday criticizing the University's new off-campus housing policy.

Introduced last week by Councilor David E. Sullivan, the first of the two orders expressed the city's "strong opposition" to the plan, approved on May 2 by the student-faculty Committee on Housing, which would allow off-campus juniors, as well as seniors, to remain affiliated with their original house.

The order opposes the new policy on the grounds that it "creates incentives for students to move off campus" and will flood the already tight Cambridge market for low- to moderate-income housing.

Harvard officials have denied the city's charges. "We really aren't encouraging students to move off," Robin Schmidt, vice-president for government and community affairs, said last week.

"We consider the House experience a vital part of undergraduate life, and it would not be responsible of us to encourage off-campus living," he added.

Dean of the College John B. Fox Jr. '59 agreed with Schmidt, and sent a letter to the council stating that the college's new policy is designed to "encourage a few students to move off campus" to enable student who currently live off campus to move back on.

Although Fox said that "it is difficult to predict what the effect of these decisions will be," he added that "it is unlikely that there will be significant net changes in the size of the off-campus population."

Fox also said in his letter that it would not be financially feasible for the College to lose the revenue provided by students living in University housing.

But Fox's letter did not convince the City Council, which unanimously passed Sullivan's order.

Councilor Francis H. Duehay '55 said his main concern was not that Harvard had changed its policy, but that it had done so without consulting city officials.

Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci expressed his disapproval by introducing a second order encouraging all municipal departments in Cambridge to organize "stiff opposition to Harvard University to jeopardize its plans and to stop them in their tracks."

The council passed Vellucci's order.

University-City communication was also the focus of Councilor David A Wylie's recommendation that Cambridge hire an architect to give design consultation on the Fogg Museum's proposed bridge-over Broadway.

The bridge would connect the museum's new addition to the older section.

But John M. Rosenfield, acting director of the Fogg and Rockefeller professor of Oriental Art, said last night that a footbridge over Broadway is "only one of a number of options" the museum is considering for a connector.

He added that officials have not yet decided on a specific plan, but that they were concerned about community relations, and that in developing the addition they would "keep in contact with neighborhoods and city officials."

Rosenfield said that the museum had already been in touch with the Mid-Cambridge Association, a local community group.

The council unanimously decided to request that City Manager Robert W. Healy hire an architect, and Healy said he would try to find funds to do so in the city budget.