QRACnophobia

Quad House email open lists lit up three days ago with the realization that Quadlings’ precious Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center (QRAC) was going under the knife until September. The long-planned renovations, which will convert some exercise space and a basketball court into a new dance studio, stem from student demand for dance practice space as the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study reabsorbs the Rieman Center—the current home of Harvard dancers. Viewed narrowly, the renovations are a victory for dancers and a loss for exercise-hungry Quadlings. Broadly, however, the QRAC’s impending closure bodes poorly for the future quality of student services in the Quad.

No student should be a second-class citizen, but the University’s future plans may be ensuring just that. The QRAC will be out of commission starting April 1, and next semester, Quadlings will return to new, smaller Hilles demi-library, with stacks now occupied by offices and other student space. Both construction initiatives are responding to legitimate and overriding student demands—the need for more student group and dance space is acute—yet together they spell a vast reduction in student services available to Quad residents.

Both the QRAC and Hilles are regrettably the only outlets that allow the College to plug up space issues quickly. This situation wasn’t inevitable. But thanks to a series of negotiations between the College and Radcliffe that bore no fruit and an overwhelming student group victory in securing cavernous expanses of Hilles, the reality is that Quadlings will be getting a lot more exercise searching for books and free weights from now on.

What the College and the Harvard Planning + Allston Initiative (HPAI) didn’t consider throughout all of this was how to tide Quadlings over through the long winter of their deprivation. In the QRAC’s absence, Quad House gyms will overflow. To avert this, alternative exercise space, like the Law School’s Hemenway Gymnasium, should be kept open later. The College should allocate additional funding to Quad House gyms, as well, and the Houses themselves should evaluate what space can be used to enlarge gyms in the meantime. But after all is said and done, the real question is not what the stopgaps will be, but whether these dual renovations mean the beginning of the end for the Quad. With Harvard’s long-term vision of the future focused on placing undergraduates in Allston and graduate students at the Quad, the Quad’s longevity as fully-featured undergrad housing has been cast solidly into doubt.

To us, the answer is simple: until the last Quadling leaves, student services and facilities in the Quad should mirror those available to students in the River Houses. Sacrifices Quadlings make for the greater good must be compensated. Though marketed by the College as improvements that promise to revitalize Quad life, the renovations of Hilles and the QRAC only promise to leave Quadlings more jealous of their River counterparts.

With a little under one-quarter of the student body residing in the Quad, Quadlings may not outnumber all the dancers and student group participants at Harvard. Nevertheless, this is not a question of numbers, but of fairness. No one can deny the serious sacrifices that the College is asking Quad residents to make in these renovations. Similarly, no one can deny Quadlings an equal Harvard experience. Anything less would be a disservice to us all.