Et Tu, Kozmo?

Coffee ice cream and goldfish crackers. Past midnight.

Two Fresh Samanthas and a Wrap burrito. During a snowstorm.

That Bunuel film for your Spanish class. With subtitles.

A new DVD player and headset. If you really so desired.

All of the above. Delivered on a bike. At virtually any hour of the day. For virtually no fee.

It was Kozmo. It was wonderful. And as of last Wednesday it’s gone.

Widespread grief and feelings of betrayal have overcome the student body since the company closed its virtual doors, abruptly shutting down its website, cutting of its phone lines and firing its employees without so much as a warning to the thousands of loyal customers who relied on Kozmo for convenience, comfort and late night chocolate fixes.

A blockmate of mine, responded to the news with a one line, panic-stricken e-mail. Subject: “The end of the world as we know it.” Content: “kozmo.com has closed its doors!”

Another replied in under a minute, obviously moved by the announcement. His e-mail: “Let’s organize a campus-wide protest.”

If viewed solely as the laments of students too lazy or too spoiled to purchase conveniences on their own time and deliver them to their dorm rooms with their own two feet, then the comments above are laughable, even pitiful. Poor little Harvard students actually have to leave their dorm rooms. The horror!

However, if given a little credence, it becomes clear that the students bemoaning the loss of Kozmo are grieving for more than the good ol’ days of lethargy and caloric indulgence. Students are grieving for something that has become anomaly in the Harvard Square of late—a retail establishment that seems to genuinely care for their needs, lifestyle and desires.

Popular myth tells of a time when Harvard Square was occupied by establishments like the Tasty, a 70-year-old burger joint that served up floats, fries and friendliness at all hours of the night. Yet, the Tasty has been closed for almost four years now, replaced by a renovated shopping complex that serves PacSun skater gear to spike-haired boys who hang in the pit and A&F posters to pre-pubescent girls on their way home from CRLS. High rents and corporate expansions have effaced a once student friendly neighborhood, replacing locally owned businesses loyal to the College crowd, with impersonal retail chains, office space and, as if they were needed, more banks.

Harvard Square looks like an upscale shopping mall now—Urban on the left, Gap on the right—and it keeps the hours of an upscale mall as well. Most stores close by 8 p.m., most restaurants by 11 p.m. You can’t rent a video at midnight, even on the weekend. A handful of late-night establishments are hanging on—Pinocchio’s, Tommy’s and the Kong. But as the closing of Grafton Street last week reminds us, even the most popular locales aren’t safe from the gentrifying forces sweeping the Square.

For its part, Harvard has done little to make up for a community that has become largely unfriendly to the student population. A 1998 effort to provide low-priced, late-night pizza delivery service from the Science Center Greenhouse lasted under a year. Loker Commons, the College’s pitiful excuse for a student center, stops serving food at 9 p.m. on weeknights, 7 p.m. on weekends. At a time when most students’ nights are just beginning, College services have long since shut down.

In this environment, Kozmo was a godsend—a retail establishment that provided greater selection and higher quality food than the few late-night eateries in the Square, that arrived on spot with laundry detergent several hours after CVS had dimmed the lights, and that rescued boring evenings with the most recent Oscar winning flicks long after VideoPros had called it a day. Kozmo was loved because it met students’ needs on students’ schedules, because it was the Harvard Square that Harvard Square was not.

For a brief moment kozmo.com diverted our attention from the degradation of our community—from landlords who care more about lining their pockets and kowtowing to suburbanites than they do about preserving those establishments that give the Square character, from University officials who see no need pick up the slack by catering to students’ needs from within the walls of Harvard itself. Perhaps it is time that we protest, not the loss of Kozmo, but the loss of our community. Perhaps we should do so before the College is filled with students too young to realize that something once grand is gone.

Lauren E. Baer ’02 is a social studies concentrator in Dunster House. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.