Ease the Move To Vanserg

Last week it was announced that the Committee on Degrees in History and Literature and the Expository Writing program are tentatively scheduled to be moved to the Vanserg Building.

To the what building?

Our point exactly. For those of you who don't know, Vanserg is located off Francis Avenue near the Divinity School. We'd like to give you a better idea of Vanserg's location, but directions to this remote building might take up an entire editorial. Just think of the building as Harvard's answer to a Siberian gulag and you'll be fine.

The move, scheduled to take place before mid-January if funds allow, will greatly inconvenience first-years, History and Literature concentrators and students seeking help at the Writing Center. First-years seeking to hand in Expos papers or meet with their preceptors, instead of being able to stop by the Union before or after meals, will be forced to bring out the dogsleds and trek over the Cambridge tundra to Vanserg. History and Literature concentrators seeking to hand in their theses will have to leave their dorms a day early. And many students who might otherwise take advantage of the resources of the Writing Center will be deterred by the sheer distance of the new building.

Mercifully, the move is only temporary. The programs are being moved while construction begins on the new Humanities Center in the combined Freshman Union and Burr Hall, the current homes of Expository Writing and History and Literature.

Construction for the new Humanities Center is an unavoidable reality which may make the relocation a necessary evil. But we believe that some attempt should have been made to minimize the number of people to be inconvenienced. The move of Expository Writing will affect 800 students per semester, more students than are contained in any single concentration. Given the sheer number of people to be affected, one would wonder why Harvard did not try harder to reorganize existing space to provide for a more convenient location.

First-years can't even tell the difference between Lowell House and Lowell Lecture Hall. How do we expect them to find Vanserg? To send 800 disoriented first-years to Vanserg several times each week is downright cruel.

We have two suggestions to ameliorate the situation. First, mailboxes for Expository Writing classes should be placed in Loker Commons. This change would not require a great deal of space, and it would provide students and teachers with a more convenient place to pick up and drop off papers and course materials. We would also suggest that Writing Center tutors and History and Literature tutorial leaders be given classroom space in centrally-located buildings for the purpose of holding open drop-in hours. If the move to Vanserg cannot be avoided, perhaps its impact can at least be minimized.