The House That Faust Built

“If you build it, he will come,” says a voice at the beginning of the 1989 movie “Field of Dreams.” Kevin Costner’s character, an Iowa farmer, interprets the message as a command to build a baseball diamond in his cornfield. “People will come, Ray,” James Earl Jones reassures him later. “They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom.” Ray builds the field and—indeed—people come.

Harvard administrators, it seems, thought the same logic would apply when they built the Student Organization Center at Hilles in the Radcliffe Quad. They forgot, however, the three rules of real estate: location, location, location. The enigmatic allure of America’s pastime may have drawn people to the cornfields of the Midwest. But the out-of-the-way SOCH, though designed and well equipped for work and leisure, is no match for the gravity of the Yard and River.

Yet there is cause for hope for the many who consider Harvard’s existing social space inadequate. According to University President Drew G. Faust, an anonymous donation made to The Harvard Campaign will fund the development of a new campus center. Reports from last year identified the Holyoke Center as a likely candidate for the site of the facility, which Faust suggested would be designed to accommodate parties, lectures, and more. If this preliminary account is to be believed, the center should be a real boon to campus life.

The plan’s architects should proceed with students’ interests in mind—particularly, we hope, those of undergraduates (even if the center is, as Faust was careful to convey, a University-wide initiative). But if the Lamont and Greenhouse Cafés are any indication, refreshments and a place to rest one’s rear end may be all that are required to foster an environment in which students can converse, work on homework, and refuel (with sandwiches, we hope; to displace Al’s would be an unprecedented act of cruelty). Add in the things that people like about Harvard’s existing but underutilized social spaces—perhaps the wide-screen televisions of the SOCH, or the stylish couches of the Northwest Labs basement—and you’ve a recipe for a place where students feel part of a social and physical community.

We applaud the University’s effective and creative use of outdoor common spaces such as the Science Center Plaza. But with New England’s winters often nasty, brutish, and long, these spaces’ capacity for cultivating and sustaining community is limited to the bookends of the academic year. If anything, the warm-weather success of the Science Center Plaza is evidence that a centrally located, smartly planned, and well-executed social space will bring people together.

The anonymous benefactor has loaded the bases for this new campus center; now it’s up to Harvard to hit one out of the park. We are confident that if Faust and the administration build it—this time, strategically—people will come.