Lamont Student Center?

In one year (or so), the space reserved for government documents in Lamont will be a café. The addition of an open-late food venue in the midst of the Yard will be like switching on a giant undergrad electromagnet. Together with Loker Pub, these two student spaces will once more make the Yard area a viable place to gather at all hours of the day.

Lamont would be a perfect temporary student center until a proper, centralized student center is built in Allson, especially where the prospects for some other Yard-located student center are slim-to-none. The combination of a 24-hour library, a great location, and food will have a profoundly positive impact for social life on campus. Lamont’s location right by a shuttle stop would make it convenient for quadlings to frequent until late at night, a fact that might finally help unite the Quad and the River. An alternative place for food and coffee located close to the stacks will draw diligent students away from their books to—gasp—socialize. In a way, a Lamont “student center” has the potential to combine the genial atmosphere of an upperclass dining hall with a crowd drawn from across campus. In that way, Lamont could solve longstanding freshman-upperclass integration problems.

The only counterarguments—to what is an undeniably good thing—involve reservations about time. The argument is that if Lamont becomes a student center, there will be no impetus for the construction of a real student center across the river. If the last year has taught us anything, it is that student activism, serious or otherwise, can change the minds of College and University planners. Until that’s proven wrong, it makes no sense to downplay and insult what the College is already offering us.

Let’s give Lamont a test run. I’ll even invite Meisel to have coffee with me in the café. Since he’s from the Quad, I’d imagine he prefers his coffee bitter.



Alex Slack ’06, a Crimson editorial chair, is a history concentrator in Leverett House.