Penguins Occupy Sever Quad

The polar climes of North House having proven too chilly for them, 88 plastic penguins yesterday took the shuttle bus south to the Yard.

The winning entry in the Harvard-Radcliffe Architecture and Design Group's Environmental Art Contest, the two-foot-high birds spent the day at Sever Quad, the lawn between Sever, Robinson and Emerson Halls.

By late afternoon about half of them were gone, freed from their captivity by covetous passersby, and most of the rest had stirred from their original positions.

But organizer Alexander J. Bass Jr. '84 was unfazed. "That's the great thing about this--it invites participation from other people," he said.

It invited comment from almost all observers, from the students who shared the shuttle bus to the perplexed professors whose offices face the area.

"I don't really have any thoughts about them," said History Department Chairman John Womack Jr. '59. "Someone pointed them out to me this morning and I thought they looked sort of--surprising," he added.

Facilities Maintenance spokesmen also professed surprise. "I have no idea who might have placed them there," said North Yard Supervisor John Cady.

Bass and Arthur R. Kroeber '84 placed them there after weighting them down with gravel. Nevertheless, several of the surviving penguins migrated from the grass to the facade of Robinson, the gate fronting Quincy St. and the trees in the quadrangle.

The Art and Design Group, was looking for "something to animate the space," said Co-President David K. Kau '85.

The organization and the Office for the Arts co-sponsored the competition, which gave contestants a $450 budget--funded by the office--and selected. "Yin-Yang/Penguin-Iceberg" because "the whole notion of introducing this totally foreign and totally ridiculous environment would make students think about why this is ridiculous," Kau said.

As for the larceny, Kau said, "We expected them to get stolen and the conceptual idea of penguins spreading through- out the campus was sort of amusing."

Bass was less amused, and said last night, "I'm trying to organize a penguin watch" of students to keep the birds from being stolen today and tomorrow, when the aviary display concludes. The penguins will appear from 9 a.m. to about 5 p.m. because, Bass said, "They are dressed in suits."

Reaction yesterday was mixed. "I think they're neat, I like them," said a History Department employee who asked to remain anonymous.

"It looks absolutely ridiculous," said Julian A. Treger '84, whose room took second place in a previous Architecture and Design Group competition. "I think they'd be much more in place at the Arctic," he added.

But it seems the place to be if you're a plastic penguin--or chicken, or duck, for that matter--is a lawn. Den Featherstone of Union Products, Inc., in Leominster, which made the penguins, said yesterday that large orders of birds are common.

"We've got people in California who bought more than that," he remarked, but said they usually go to wholesalers and not for personal use.

Featherstone added, "I've got seven on my lawn, that's all I know.