Lux et Veritas

Let there be light in the lecture rooms. Sanders Theater and the Geological Lecture Room are each more than 50 footcandles below the recommended lighting levels, and the Fogg Large Lecture Room and Pierce are ill-illumined too.

Back row interdigitators may be delighted with the dimness, but legible notes and unimpaired eyesight are hard enough to maintain without added environmental handicaps. Protesters have been making plenty of noise about this matter of light, yet Dean Trottenberg has responded with blatant indifference. His legalistic quibbling over the applicability of the Massachusetts lighting law is irrelevant. The University should be obliged by responsible concern, if not by law, to provide adequate lumination. And it doesn't take a light meter to see that it has failed to do so.

If the Administration intends to give some support to its often avowed statement that the Harvard Council of Undergraduate Affairs does have some influence, then it should acknowledge the existence of de facto insufficient illumination. Prolonged inaction and indifference has thus far tended to both discredit the Administration's statement in regard to the HCUA and to dim hopes for improved lighting.

Dean Trottenberg should recognize the validity of the current complaints by putting Sanders, and the Geological Lecture Room on an immediate program of renovation. He should not continue to take the issue lightly.