Crunch Time

Harvard has been abuzz recently with talk of athletic renovations. The Crimson reported on Oct. 27 that administrators were actively considering putting a bubble over Harvard Stadium to create a dynamic new facility that could be used year-round, by a number of varsity teams, and not just by football players on six Saturdays per year. Whether you like it or loathe it——and the opinions of undergraduates and alumni seem pretty divided—covering the stadium would be a bold move.

But, in any case, that possibility is years off. As Robert Mitchell, Director of Communications for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, put it in an e-mail, “While there are lots of ideas related to physical improvements to the stadium, there are no specific plans to proceed at this time.” Meanwhile, though, back in Cambridge, the Malkin Athletic Center (MAC) is in urgent need of sweeping renovations, and yet that prospect seems no closer today than it has for many years.

The current condition of the MAC should be an embarrassment to the administration. It is certainly unacceptable to the students who use it on a regular basis. At peak times—as everyone, of course, knows—there are long lines just to use weights or treadmills. The swimming pool is dark and dingy, and the changing rooms redefine the word skuzzy. The red brick building may appear stately from the outside, but the structure is fundamentally unsuited—in its current configuration, at least—for a modern gym. The MAC is, in short, better suited to an era when workouts involved hefting around medicine balls, not using ellipticals.

Please be in no doubt: yesterday’s announcement that House gyms will each receive up to $20,000 from the College seems impressive, but really changes nothing. No one wants to work out in cramped, dusty rooms in basements (where House gyms will still be located), however good the equipment there is. It is vital to recognize—as, to be fair, the administrators who made the announcement did—that this is a stopgap measure at best, and Harvard needs an impressive central recreational athletic facility. Logic and geography dictate that that place should be the MAC.

But the MAC’s shortcomings are painfully apparent to everyone who has ever had the misfortune to visit. The important question is not whether the MAC is acceptable, but what can—or, rather, what will—be done to improve Harvard’s dismal workout facilities. It would be tempting to charge the new Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 with the responsibility of ensuring rapid renovations to the substandard facilities currently on offer. Gross, who has shown a commendable eagerness to dive into projects to improve the quality of undergraduate life, most notably the proposed changes to Hilles Library, would seem to be a perfect man for the job.

Unfortunately, Harvard’s administrative setup dictates that the ultimate responsibility for overseeing any MAC renovations lies not with the willing and able Gross, but the altogether more remote Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby. That the man who admonished the incoming Class of 2006 with the phrase “you are here to work, and your business here is to learn” is the individual who has to take the lead in fixing up recreational athletic facilities is not terribly heartening. Kirby has, however, insisted that he “desperately want[s] to renovate the MAC.” On the face of it, that seems quite reassuring. But, in fact, Kirby’s response doesn’t explain at all how improving the MAC stacks up against FAS’ non-athletic obligations.

One problem holding up any significant progress is the idea that new homes need to be found for the three varsity teams that practice in the MAC before serious repairs can begin. Hence, when Kirby was touting the stadium redesign, he said to The Crimson, “You could do much more with the MAC if you did some reorganization on the other side of the river.” Yet, every administrator I questioned, whether in University Hall, Mass Hall or the Athletics Department, agreed that any such major “reorganization” over the river, including (but not limited to) building the bubble over the stadium, is years away. Also, as Associate Dean of the College Thomas A. Dingman ’67 put it last month, citing the uncertainty of Harvard’s grand designs in Allston, “People are, wisely, hesitant to commit to things across the river, if things might change there.”

All of this leaves one mired in something of a quagmire. The MAC is woefully sub-par. Renovating it is, supposedly, a priority for the administration. Major improvements, however, are dependent on moving wrestling, fencing and volleyball across the river. Such moves are, it seems, highly unlikely to happen any time soon. Thus, as Dingman suggested, what is on the table right now—and should be announced in a couple of months—is a much smaller-scale renovation package, which keeps the three varsity sports in the MAC but makes some limited increases to the total amount of recreational space available.

The state of the MAC, however, is such that minor renovations—and, yes, administrators, that includes small changes “spun” into big ones—will not pass muster. It lags far behind its counterparts at rival institutions—and, as a T-ride to Northeastern shows, it also trails gyms at scores of schools not normally thought to have superior (or even equivalent) facilities to Harvard’s. And that is, surely, unacceptable.

The MAC is a Victorian gymnasium masquerading as a satisfactory centerpiece to Harvard’s 21st century recreational athletics program. The sooner it is put out of its misery, the sooner generations of Harvard students will be put out of theirs. Such changes will, of course, be logistically complex and financially challenging. But that is precisely what prioritizing something means. So the message to the administration is simple: Either step up and find a way, as so many other universities have done, to provide a first-rate workout facility or stop wasting everyone’s time by pretending that doing so is a priority.

Anthony S.A. Freinberg ’04 is a history concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.