Big Squeeze: Student Groups Search for Space

Associate Dean of the College David P. Illingworth ’71 says he cannot enter the HMV on Mt. Auburn Street in Harvard Square without a sigh.

Every time he walks up the stairs to the second-story record store, he sees the empty space where a clothing store used to be located and his mind jumps to the College’s dire need of space.

The College currently has 250 registered student groups, with only a few offices for them in the basements of Thayer and Holworthy Halls and common space in the Houses and classrooms.

The situation is a sticky one. Groups move from office to office, House to House, without any assurance they will have a desk next year, or a piano tomorrow. Other groups are evicted from their workplaces and then granted permission to stay.

And the situation is not improving.

The College’s lease of the Agassiz Theater and Rieman Dance Center from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study will soon expire. Practice and performance space for dance and theater groups is already tight.

The only building projects anticipated to increase student space are far from being completed. In fact, they have not even been started.

The Malkin Athletic Center (MAC), long considered the biggest waste of space this side of the Charles River, and the Hasty Pudding building, which is so dilapidated that Illingworth has permanently posted a security guard on duty there, are both slated to be renovated.

But the MAC renovations cannot begin until the varsity volleyball, fencing and wrestling teams, which practice and compete in the MAC, find a new home across the river.

And the Pudding’s renovations are in limbo until the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), which purchased the crumbling facility over two years ago, can raise enough money to cover its cost.

Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 has said finding space for students is one of his top priorities.

But for now, the University’s expansion rests as the great hope on the horizon for the College—and its many student groups—to gain some much-needed office and practice space.

“It’s a holding pattern,” Illingworth says. “There isn’t much that can be done about this until Allston is developed.”

Not in My House

Making matters worse, many students say, is the that complicated House bureaucracy gets in the way of groups effectively using House common spaces like Junior Common Rooms (JCRs)—a significant problem given Lewis often cites space in the Houses as the answer to calls for a student center.

Though many student groups left without performance space or offices in which to hold meetings rely on JCRs to house their groups meetings, some group leaders say the rules for securing the rooms make it needlessly difficult to reserve them.

“The University should attempt to clarify the way we use space, especially House rooms,” said Oliver B. Libby ’03, president of the LowKeys. “It’s absolutely arcane.”

Student groups seeking a room in Leverett House must apply at most 72 hours before the proposed time of their meeting.

In both Leverett and Mather House, JCR reservations do not imply exclusive rights to space. Residents may use rooms at all times.

“If your activity is not consistent with this, you should find some other space,” says the Leverett House website.

According to Emerson G. Farrell ’03, president of the Mather House Committee, one person from the House must be present at a student group’s meeting for the group to be eligible for space.

In Lowell House, drama and choral groups wanting to use the dining hall need the approval of one of the masters, the superintendent and one of the dining hall managers.

According to Pforzheimer House Committee President Richard J. Vivero ’03, groups that want a room in the House need to make a presentation to the house committee. Also, two large separate events cannot take place on consecutive nights, and there can be no more than two dining hall events per month.

“Each House has a quirk about its use,” says Sonia H. Kastner ’03, president of the College Democrats. “Some of the Houses want to know how many students from their own House will be attending the event. Other ones have size limitations that are disproportionate to the space.”

Kastner says the College Dems got so tired of dealing with the various Houses’ rules that the group did a “consolidating research project” on the JCR booking procedures for each House.

Kastner says she hopes their extra effort gives the group an edge over other student groups in finding space for meetings.

“Every group leader who has been around the block knows that Quincy House is the place to go,” says Kastner, a Quincy resident. “It would be great if the [Undergraduate Council] streamlined the booking process.”

The Thayer Shuffle

In Harvard Yard, where groups are permanently assigned offices, the dilemma is not complex booking protocol but plain old scarcity.

No building better represents the plight of student groups than the tug of war in Thayer Hall basement between the Harvard Foundation for Race and Intercultural Relations and the International Relations Council (IRC) last year.

A couch with pillows decorates the hallway of the IRC office. Cluttered with papers and other junk, the hallway leads into four other rooms—a tiny closet for back issues, the room used by the International Review, a desk used by the Harvard Program for International Education (HPIE) and the main IRC office, which has enough space for three chairs and a desk.

“You can imagine how hot it gets here during the summer or when this place is filled with people gearing up for production,” says Howard A. Levine ’03, president of IRC.

But Levine says he would not trade the space for anything.

“Space in Harvard Square is very expensive and in the Yard is nearly impossible,” Levine says. “We have the biggest space and it’s central on campus.”

Down the hall from the IRC, the Harvard Foundation is less enthusiastic about the condition of its offices—three small rooms about the size of Canaday singles.

In one room, white file boxes are piled up to the ceiling, with a life-size cardboard Veritas shield and a Chinese fan floating amid the files.

The two other rooms are taken up almost entirely by a few desks and file boxes that have overflowed from the other room. Last October, Illingworth notified the IRC—which is the umbrella organization for groups including Harvard Model United Nations, the International Review, HPIE, the Model Security Council, Harvard Model Congress and Harvard Model Congress Europe—that they might have to move out of the Yard.

He told the IRC that the Harvard Foundation needed more space and the IRC would have to give up its office—a decision that angered many students.

“We support the Harvard Foundation, but we’re confused by why the administration needs to move 12 student groups in order to benefit one group that is not student-run,” said former IRC President Michael J. Gilbert ’02 at the time of the announcement.

But the IRC insisted on keeping its space and, after initial signs that Illingworth would not budge, managed to convince administrators to let them stay.

“Having shown them around our office, they seemed to understand that cutting space wouldn’t work,” Levine says.

With the IRC staying put for now and administrators talking about finding Yard space for the Study Abroad Office—which no longer reports to the Office of Career Services where it is now located—Illingworth says the College has begun a search for a space to rent for the Harvard Foundation.

Dr. S. Allen Counter, who is director of the Harvard Foundation, says the College found one space on Plympton Street that the Harvard Foundation could rent, but he isn’t happy about the prospect.

“The student officers of the Harvard Foundation and the student interns all prefer to have an office that is readily accessible to students in Harvard Yard,” Counter says.

Other groups inhabiting Thayer basement are not living any more luxuriously than the Foundation—and have had to do just as much shuffling. Demon, a quarterly humor magazine, was forced to move out of the office it shared with the conservative journal the Salient into that of the liberal Perspective.

According to Rabia S. Belt ’01-’03, former managing editor of Perspective, the original arrangement was for Demon to share the Salient’s office space in exchange for the Salient being able to use the Demon’s computer equipment—but once the Salient got new computer equipment, Demon was asked to move out.

Perspective can’t make use of the computer Demon leaves largely unused, as Perspective relies on PCs while Demon owns a Mac. That leaves Perspective with only two computers—one for layout, one for art design—to produce a 15-page paper.

“That’s really not that bad,” says former Perspective Managing Editor Alexandra Neuhaus-Follini ’04-’05. “People had to sit on the fridge or on broken computer monitors, on the floor or on the tables. We used to have crates and junk lying around.”

Future Prospects

But while groups like Demon and the Harvard Foundation get moved around from office to office or booted completely for the Yard, there is no entry into the market for premium office space—despite the constantly changing roster of active groups that need it.

Illingworth says the student groups that currently have space were simply “grandfathered in” to their offices.

“We don’t really have a process [for giving out offices] because it’s been so long since we’ve had space to give out,” Illingworth says.

He and Lewis say there is no hope in the near future that the problem will be alleviated.

Illingworth says the renovation of the Hasty Pudding building will not yield any extra office space, only meeting space and theater space.

As a result, only the four groups that currently inhabit the building—the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the Hasty Pudding Social Club, the Krokodiloes and the Radcliffe Pitches—will use the building after the renovations are completed.

If the renovations start in May, the building could be ready for use by January 2005, according to Illingworth.

But right now, Illingworth says the start date of the Pudding renovations depends on how fundraising for the project goes.

“Unless the fundraising process goes really fast, we won’t be starting this spring,” he says.

But Illingworth says he has great hopes that the MAC renovations—which will free up the room wasted by stadium seating for the pool—will provide new social and office space.

Illingworth says what the space is used for in the end depends on what newly appointed FAS Dean William C. Kirby thinks it would be best used for—and that still remains to be decided.

Since MAC and Pudding renovation will not be completed any time soon, the space problem seems likely to get worse before it gets better.

“It’s certainly the case that the need to make provisions for the loss of the Agassiz and the Rieman Center are important priorities,” Lewis says.

Even now, arts groups do not have an easy time finding space for practice and performances.

“To find rooms for auditions is a full-time job,” the LowKeys’ Libby says. “Performance space is hard to get, especially in places like Sanders Theatre or Lowell Lecture Hall. They are not reserved for Harvard students alone.”

The problem, according to Libby, arises because the alternatives to Sanders and Lowell Lecture Hall have much lower seating accommodations.

“We improvise a lot to find space,” said Libby. “The [Currier House] Fishbowl is an awful space, having to push and pull the couches around.”

Lewis says that “big decisions” will have to be made about how to expand space for students as the University begins to develop its land in Allston and Watertown.

“I’ve taken the position that I’m not in favor of moving student activities to Watertown,” Lewis says. “Status at Harvard is measured by meters from the John Harvard statue.”

But the crunch on student space is not the only variety that troubles FAS.

Kirby has made it a priority to grow the size of the faculty, aiming for a minimum faculty growth of 10 percent over the next 10 years.

“We’re pursuing this in a very aggressive and determined way,” Kirby says.

According to Kirby and Lewis, a lack of space is the greatest hurdle standing in the way of that growth.

“There are many academic departments that are severely space-constrained,” Lewis says. “There are departments where they can’t hire because there are no offices to put anyone in.”

But Lewis says he will not let FAS put the issue of student space on the back-burner.

“I’ve been clear at every opportunity that it’s important for the health of the College community to support the non-academic side of student life,” Lewis says. “If you look at what people write about 15 to 25 years after the fact, what they think they took away from their experience at Harvard is pretty well balanced between academic inspiration, social ties and activities they undertook outside the classroom.”

—Staff writer Anne K. Kofol can be reached at kofol@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Svetlana Y. Meyerzon can be reached at meyerzon@fas.harvard.edu.