The House That Wasn't: Struggles at Dudley

This article is the first in a two-part series on Dudley House and non-residential life. The Second part will appear on Monday.

When most people think of student life at Harvard, dormitories come to mind. More than 95 percent of all undergraduates live in the Yard and Union halls and the 12 residential houses.

Nonetheless, Harvard life has another side to it. More than 250 undergraduates live off-campus and most them are affiliated with Dudley, Harvard's 13th and most often overlooked house. Although most Harvard students rarely think about Dudley, house affiliates say it boasts the greatest student diversity and richest college life on campus.

"It's got a huge variety," says Matthew J. Finch '89, Dudley house committee co-chairman. "It's as individualistic as the Adams House stereotype."

Serving as an academic and social center for the undergraduates and approximately 150 graduate students, Dudley contains the University's highest centration of non-traditional students. Of all the houses, Dudley's population includes the greatest proportions of foreign, married and older students who have taken time off.

House affiliates also include students who have chosen to leave the residential houses and transfer students who are not guaranteed on-campus housing.

As Dudley Senior Tutor John R. Marquand says, Dudley affiliates are "a cosmopolitan group," more inclined to "know what they want out of Harvard."

But times are troubled for Dudley, the house that is not a house. The on-campus center for nonresident students is the focus of complaints from both transfer students and frustrated administrators. The house administration must contend with rumors that Dudley faces closure, and at the same time attempt to place Dudley on an equal footing with the residential houses.

The house leadership is also in flux. Dudley House Co-Masters Arthur C. Loeb and Lotje Loeb recently announced that they will step down this summer, citing professional commitments and disagreements with the College administration.

On the surface, Dudley appears similar to the other houses. The house administration--based in Lehman Hall--includes co-masters, a senior tutor and surprisingly, a full complement of resident and non-resident tutors. Like the residential houses, Dudley also maintains a house committee, senior and junior common rooms, a dining hall, darkrooms, art studios and a house library.

"Dudley is not isolated," says Lee D. Cranmer II '88, "It's a house, definitely. Some people have very strong feelings about it."

By nature, however, "Dudley House simply is different," says Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57.

According to College policy, Dudley House's purpose is to serve the needs of non-residential students, and this involves providing for a group of students whose characteristics and wants have shifted dramatically over the years. Currently the house serves a large number of transfer students, who are required to affiliate with Dudley. Many of these students say they would rather live on campus, and if they are given the opportunity, large numbers of them students move into the residential houses.

"You have no choice as a transfer, you're just thrown in with a group of people," says Elizabeth G. Malloy '89, a transfer who recently left Dudley to affiliate with Adams House. "It's sort of a mish-mash of people. It's not really a way to meet people," Malloy says.

But 10 years ago, Dudley students consisted predominantly of independent-minded students dissatisfied with traditional house life who want to sample the alternative lifestyle made possible by affiliating with Dudley.

In addition to the changing nature of the student body, other problems have surfaced: the rules about house affiliation for non-resident students have varied widely in recent years, Dudley's physical plant has changed, and house officials and University administrators currently disagree about Dudley's role in the community.

Although Dudley serves a similar number of students as the other houses--about 400--it has had to fight against ignorance and prejudice from students and administrators alike, says Arthur Loeb. "Dudley in its uniqueness has had the problems of being out of the mainstream and subject to prejudices about being out of the mainstream," says Loeb," That's a vicious cycle."

Much of the prejudice stems from the fact that Dudley has never been officially a residential house and therefore was not completely integrated into College life. Differences lie in participation in intramural athletics, social events and extracurriculars, Jewett says. Dudley traditionally does worse than the residential houses in intramurals, primarily because it often cannot field full teams in all the events.

Dudley affiliates may feel that their house is unappreciated, but the non-resident house plays a vital role in keeping the College's budget in the black. The 12 residential houses can only accommodate a fixed number of students. However, Harvard's operating budget requires the College to enroll approximately 400 more tuition-paying "student equivalents" than it has beds in the residential houses. The system works because the extra students have traditionally chosen to live off-campus and affiliate with Dudley.

"If there were not Dudley House, the rest of the houses would be in terrible shape," says Lowell House Master William H. Bossert '57. "I could understand the Loebs if they were feeling a bit used," Bossert says.

Stigma is nothing new for Dudley House. Some of the problems the Loebs currently face--including a rapidly changing population--date back to the house's origins in the 1930s. When Dudley began as a center for non-resident students, it catered mostly to local commuting undergraduates, who generally were poorer than the rest of the student body. During the great Depression and the introduction of the house system, these students often could not afford to live on campus.

World War II brought a new group of students to Dudley. the non-residents' center absorbed an influx of students coming to Harvard under the GI Bill; veterans returning from years of fighting often chose not to live in the other houses with younger, traditionally college-aged tenants. At that time, up to 600 undergraduates affiliated with the center, located in Dudley Hall at the present site of Holyoke Center.

In the 1950s, Dudley finally gained a house master, and a decade later, it was given full house status and a physical plant based in Lehman Hall. The 1960s also witnessed another shift in house demographics--at this time, waves of boarding school graduates decided to leave structured living environments and live off campus.

The move out of the residential houses continued into the 1970s and mirrored social trends as living off campus became chic, house officials say. Also at this time, the University decided to give graduate students the option of joining the house in hope that when these doctoral candidates became professors, they would bring their enthusiasm for the house system to other colleges.

Although Dudley seemed healthy only a few years ago, the situation soon changed. The introduction of the University's present-day, need-based financial aid system brought dorm life within reach of all undergraduates, and sky-rocketing Cambridge real estate values made finding a livable appartment a very difficult task. Furthermore, a new social atmosphere that encouraged students to stay in houses on campus for the "Harvard experience." Not surprisingly, the number of Dudley affiliates began to shrink. By the early 1980s, enrollment had dropped to approximately 200.

But the residential houses cannot accommodate extra students, so Harvard has had to find new ways of increasing the student body without upping the residential population. And the solution has been to accept more transfer students, deny them guaranteed college housing and ask them to affiliate with Dudley House. The number of transfer students has risen dramatically from a few dozen 10 years ago to more than 100, and these late-comers to Harvard now make up more than half of Dudley's undergraduate population.

While this step solved the College's crowding problem, it created new dilemmas. Dudley House gained a large group of new students who did not ask to be affiliated with Dudley and were unhappy in the house. The house administration currently has to expend a great deal of energy toward integrating transfer students into the University. But the effort often seems wasted because more than half of the transfer students switch their affiliation to a residential house once their mandatory term in Dudley ends.

"Dudley House is operating as a half-way house," Arthur Loeb says.

Transfer students complain about this situtation because they are given less choice of house affiliation than other students. The College administration has therefore experimented with affiliation rules and introduced special kinds of off-campus housing.

Jewett says, "We thought it was unfair that transfer students were the only ones not given a choice to where they would live." To correct the problem, in 1983 the College changed the rule requiring transfer students to remain with Dudley House until their senior year and allowed juniors to affiliate with other houses if they wished.

The rule was changed back three years later and then changed again this fall to allow students to switch affiliation after one semester. The current situation may provide transfer students with greater flexibility, but the Loebs say that their student turnover is now too high. "It's just too difficult," Arthur Loeb says.

When transfers switch houses shortly after arriving at Dudley, it demoralizes the house tutoring staff and hampers the house's ability to provide social services such as intramural teams and dramatic events, Arthur Loeb says. The College and the Dudley administration have therefore begun looking for ways to make the house more attractive to transfer students.

After long negotiations, the College this fall opened the Lehman Hall dining room for dinner and began subsidizing off-campus housing in nearby Harvard-owned buildings. While these innovations have mitigated some transfer students' complaints, they have also altered the nature of the house, say the Loebs. "Annex housing makes us a half-residential house," Arthur Loeb says.

The frequent rule changes have made it nearly impossible for the Loebs to provide the house with a sense of stability, they say. But Jewett says that goal will always be out of reach.

Dudley House cannot afford to try and keep its student body stable and at a high level at a time when the University needs to register more students, Jewett says. "The purpose of...any institution[at Harvard] isn't to protect or serve themselves but to serve [the community] as a whole," the dean says.

The need for flexibility means that even Jewett says that he cannot predict what Dudley House will be like in five years or whether the non-resident house will continue to exist.

The flow of tranfer students into the University is expected to remain steady, and the College will probably continue to experiment with house affiliation rules to meet these students' needs, Jewett says.

"I would not be surprised if Dudley House were abolished in five years, but I would not be surprised if it were strong and vigorous then, either," Jewett says. "Dudley House has always had a survival factor."

The current situation leaves the Loebs to conclude that Dudley House will continue to serve as a processing center for transfer students, of whom approximately half may leave every semester. At the same time, they are left to cope with students in annex housing, some of whom keep Dudley affiliation while their roommates go elsewhere. And although admistrators, house officials, and other house masters agree that Dudley House is uniquely able to provide a high level of services for both transfer students and voluntary nonresidents, the Loebs say the strain is too great.

"We've had no meeting of the minds on where it's going at all," the Loebs say. "The next master will have exactly the same problem."