Officials of Faculty Consider Moving From Holyoke Center

Financial officials of the deficit-ridden Faculty of Arts and Sciences are considering moving Faculty offices out of Holyoke Center in order to avoid paying the building's high rental fees.

Under Harvard's decentralized accounting system, the University owns Holyoke Center, but some of its subdivisions have to pay rent for the offices they use--in the Faculty's case, more than $300,000 next year.

The Faculty's offices in the building are those of the History and Literature, History of Science, and Linguistics Departments; the Economics and Government Department tutorial offices; the Registrar's office; and the Harvard College Fund.

Richard G. Leahy, associate dean of the Faculty for resources and planning, said yesterday. "We're very interested in finding other ways to house these functions in other buildings we own" because "we're hunting for ways to reduce our expenses."

Leahy cited Lowell Lecture Hall and Allston Burr Lecture Hall, two buildings the Faculty closed most of the winter to save heating costs, as places some of the Holyoke Center offices might be moved to.

He said the Economics and Government tutorial offices would be the first to move, possibly as early as September, and that the Harvard College Fund would probably not move out of Holyoke Center at all because it is part of a larger complex of University-wide offices in the building.

'Nice Place'

Karl E. Case, head tutor of the Economics Department, said yesterday. "I like Holyoke Center. I think it's a nice place to have a tutorial office. My concern is that the undergraduate office not be screwed out of any space. Our department is not going to take a cut without a lot of screaming."

Case said he has no objection to a move if it means no loss of space, and Leahy said any office that moved out of the building would probably get the same amount of space elsewhere.