Parting Shot

Major Henry Higginson must be lonely. One of the all-time best friends of undergraduates is stuck presiding over the central stairway of the Barker Center, watching students dash in and out while faculty members toil in quiet offices. The man who chose central heating over lavish furnishings to create a common space that would make all undergrads feel comfortable has been forced to watch his club be converted into an office building for professors.

So much for directed giving.

Of courses, even before the Union was shut down for remodeling, the administration had attacked the Major's ideal of community. The Major, Who in 1901 donated the funds to build and furnish the Union, sought to construct a building where all the undergraduates, many of whom could not afford "Gold Coast" housing, could spend their days. He wanted them to have a club of their own, a non-exclusive haven designed for all students, rich and poor. In the early 1930s, the selective house system was created, and the Union was relegated to serve as the first-year dinning hall.

The socially undesirable sophomores, juniors and seniors had lost their place of instant acceptance and belonging, but at least the Major heard the unrestrained roar of all first-years in conversation morning, noon and night. He could rejoice with the triumphant undergrad whose well-flung butter pat hit his relatively inexpensive ceiling. As the decades went by, and the voices of women and minority students began to contribute to the din, I like to think the old boy was grinning under that mustache of his.

The creation of Loker Commons my sophomore year seemed a time for the Major and me to celebrate. Finally, the campus would get that place for "casual eating and meeting," as Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles describes it. Knowles, with other College administrators, announced that the "sadly decayed machines and defunct heating systems in the basement of Memorial Hall would be transformed into a real student center.

But it's obvious that Loker was not designed to be a comfortable home for undergraduates. There weren't rugs or soft lighting--it was all concrete and fluorescence. There was an LED board that repeated its "programming" every five minutes, but not TV to watch for an hour at a time. Even the coffee shop had metal chairs. We hadn't been given a student center at all--we'd been given a poor excuse for a shopping mall food court.

The administration had created a space where students could, in the words of Knowles, "graze, rather than dine." And no wonder students didn't visit Loker once the $50 bribe ran out--if we wanted to graze or sit on unpadded chairs, Au Bon Plain is more centrally-located and serves better food at comparable prices. (You see, Catherine B. Loker made a mistake the Major had not; she trusted the administration to oversee the design and construction of a space for students.)

Once the financial disaster of Loker was apparent (and only then), administrators realized something had gone wrong. Relegating student input to a token role in the planning process--a few seats on a committee--came back to haunt them. But even financial losses didn't make them heed the voices of dissatisfied undergraduates. Administrators continued to resist dramatic changes in lighting and furnishings. Their half-hearted response--a few couches and a pool table--could not overcome the utter lack of regard for undergraduate life apparent in the design.

Administrators would desperately love us to believe, and believe themselves, that the house system responds to this lack of community space for undergraduates. Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 says the system of "13 separate dining halls, JCRs, etc., is far more costly [than a single, central union is] and leads to a much greater sense of community. Harvard does have interhouse dining and groups do meet in the houses."

But students know the houses do not provide a common space, and the fact that my keycard will not give me access to my friends' houses reminds me of that. So do interhouse restrictions. Moreover, I have seen randomization dilute house character bit by bit. With the gradual dissipation of that character, houses have also been less likely to reach out to non-resident students who used to share the interests of specific communities with a base in the house. The houses cannot compensate for the lack of community feeling at the College; at the most, they offer 13 disparate communities.

So where are students hanging out instead? The TV in The Crimson's conference room is always on; students sleep in the Castle of a semi-secret Bow Street social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine. The Institute of Politics' room for undergraduate officers reveals a lived-in disorder; at Hillel's student lounge, final clubs and the Advocate, undergraduates while away the hours. These spaces often look more disheveled than dignified, something those designing the Barker Center and Loker tried very hard to avoid. Students choose to spend their time in spaces set up for students--spaces with a design that demonstrates the value placed on undergraduate input and use.

We are engaged in the business of breaking into smaller and smaller communities, and the administration is encouraging us by refusing to create a common space truly designed for undergraduates, a space where we can be less than dignified. Though Lewis bemoans the lack of space for undergraduate organizations, no one is building us an office building. Many student groups, including the Undergraduate Council, remain stuck in the warren of offices and store-rooms underneath first-year dormitories, lacking the resources to build the kind of space older, endowed undergraduate institutions have. They cannot create for themselves the kind of space the administration has refused to build for them.

Such a building would be in line with the professed reason for randomization. When attempting to diversify our communities, did the administration try to bring different groups of undergraduates together in a common space, perhaps in an intercultural center, or even more broadly, a building devoted to undergraduate office space? Most emphatically not. Almost every high-level administrator vigorously opposes the creation of an intercultural center, just as they have for the past 25 years. Instead, they chose randomization, further splitting apart the different groups of students.

However, when accommodating the interests of Faculty members, administrative attitudes differ--as the Barker Center shows. The administration does not believe Faculty communities are forged by splintering existing groups into smaller and smaller clusters. Knowles rejoiced when the Barker Center brought together the humanities departments. He extolled the virtues of having scholars of diverse disciplines come together in a common space to learn and share. So why should undergraduates be any different?

We deserve a real community space, the kind the Major tried to permanently give us in 1901. In turning the Union into office space for professors, the administration has willfully perverted the Major's plan. Ironically, the administration has stolen his building to give the rich Faculty the gift he intended for poor undergraduates.

Loker, in all its misguided design, does not come close to being a common space of the undergraduates, designed by the undergraduates for the undergraduates. The lack of that kind of space has fractured our community, and a unified sense of what it means to be a Harvard undergraduate remains fractured with it.

Valerie J. MacMillan '98 was managing editor of The Crimson in 1997.