Party’s Over: Currier TLR To Be Reading Room

On a typical Saturday night this September, party-goers showing up in Currier House may find students grappling with Kantian ideals instead of tapping a keg in the Tuchman Living Room (TLR).

Joseph L. Badaracco, who is the Shad professor of business ethics, and Deputy Dean of the College Patricia O’Brien, who are the masters of Currier House, sent out an e-mail to all Currier residents last week informing them that the TLR would be converted to a reading room and the art studio to a party space. But not everyone in the House supports the plan.

Jonathan C. Bardin ’06, who spearheaded the plans last semester when he was Currier House Committee co-chair, said that Currier is the only house without a library or a reading room, even though “the Harvard literature states that every house has one.”

The Currier House website lists the Bingham lower main room and rooms located on the first floors of Tuchman and Gilbert as reading rooms. But current Currier House Committee Co-Chair Techrosette Leng ’07 said that the Tuchman room is visited rarely, while the Gilbert and Bingham rooms are used more often for TV-watching and meetings—not for quiet reading.

According to Leng, Currier residents currently study in Cabot House’s library, a reading room in Pforzheimer House, or Hilles library. But both the Masters and HoCo members feel students need a reading room of their own.

Leng said that “huge renovations” will take place in the art studio to transform it into what she and other HoCo members jokingly call “The Super TLR.” Two walls in the art studio will be knocked down to expand the space of the room and accommodate parties, while a side room that now contains a sink will serve as a coat room and bar.

Badaracco and O’Brien wrote in their e-mail that they hope both construction projects will be completed before classes begin in the fall.

Bardin, whose senior honors thesis evaluated Harvard’s residential system, said that the art studio will be an even better party space than the TLR has been in the past.

“The TLR is sort of a room that exists,” he said. “But the art studio seems really suited to have parties in it.”

Leng and other HoCo members gave Currier House residents tours of the studio last week.

“They were so giddy,” she said.

However, Laura S. Tom ’07, a Currier resident who attends a weekly figure drawing class in the studio, is not so happy about the space’s conversion to a social venue.

“I feel like there are already so many party spaces and places to study and an art studio is one of a kind,” she said. Tom said that 12 undergraduates and three graduate students are enrolled in the art class.

O’Brien mentioned that the class will possibly be moved to Pforzheimer House’s studio or a space in Hilles.

But Tom is skeptical that another room will compare to the art studio in Currier House.

“I just feel like they’re getting rid of the art studio entirely,” she said.

Bardin, a Visual and Environmental Studies concentrator who has taken a class in the art studio before, said that the conversions will be worth displacing the students who currently use the studio.

“Every once in a while you have to sacrifice a space used by a few people even if they love that space and make good use out of it,” he said.

—Staff writer Katherine M. Gray can be reached at kmgray@fas.harvard.edu.