Lunch in the Clouds

In the William James Hall, the entire magnificent, deep-carpeted, tall-ceilinged fifteenth floor, whose terrace commands an unmatched view of Cambridge and Harvard, is devoted to faculty office space and a faculty conference-room. By contrast, the windowless basement is taken up by student classrooms and a lecture-hall. This peculiar distribution of floors does not provoke us to launch a Free Speech Movement at Harvard, but it does get us thinking along the lines of some of Mario Savio's complaints about the role of students at a university. It would perhaps be going too far to suggest the deportation to the basement of Professors Erikson, Kagan, Wiley, White, Swanson and McClelland, but we do feel that some small gesture of good will is in order on the part of the administration. Specifically, the fifteenth-floor balcony should be shared with the student-body.

Last Saturday afternoon--one of this spring's sunniest and warmest--we made an abortive attempt to gain access to the balcony. On emerging from the elevator we found ourselves restricted to a plush receiving-room, walled on the view side with thick amber glass. On inquiring, we descovered that students can see the balcony only by joining the Crimson Key tours that are allowed to take people on Sunday afternoons. (It seems ironic that prospective freshmen are enticed to come to Harvard by a view that they'll never see as Harvardmen.)

Why construct tall buildings at a university if you are going to lock up the view on Saturday afternoons in spring?

We propose that chairs and small tables be placed on the balcony, and that students and faculty be allowed to bring picnic lunches, say, from noon until two o'clock. At other hours, the balcony would remain closed. Certainly, there would be some difficulties. Timid professors would object to students peering in at them through the floor-to-ceiling windows. (As a solution, we suggest the use of their floor-to-ceiling curtains).

But we challenge the administration to look beyond these considerable but wholly solvable problems to a vision of the world's first undergraduate, urban, aerial, outdoor picnic ground. This is the kind of proposal that administrations generally pass off as "unrealistic" with an understanding, paternal smile. We hope, however, that this plan will not be ignored simply because it is unusual.

As well as providing an inspiring alternative to the congested lunch-counters in the square, a balcony picnic ground might stir the beginnings of a new kind of college spirit to fill the vacuum left by the decline of the loyalty to Harvard that used to thrive on college songs, rivalries with Yale and ivy walls.

Harvard's sense of community is dissolving, and yet, Harvard is booming as never before. It has more money, more buildings and more people. Each year new institutes spring up, new centers blossom. Our professors have penetrated to the darkest of the jet-set, and have spanned the globe in administrative and advisory capacities.

By opening a lunch area on the parapet of Harvard's latest, tallest, whitest, modern building, the administration could seize the initiative in restoring a lively sense of community to its alienated student body.