GSAS Student Center to Open In Lehman Hall After Vacation

A graduate student pub which will serve beer and wine will open in Lehman Hall April 2 under the auspices of the Graduate Student Council (GSC).

The pub will operate from 4 to 8 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays in the Lehman Hall dining room. Lehman Hall already has a liquor license, and Dudley House will provide a serving staff for the students, Charles P. Whitlock, Master of Dudley House, said yesterday.

The GSC has tried to obtain a social center "time and time again, but some roadblock has always come up," Thomas J. McDonnell, president of the GSC, said this week, adding that graduate students need a central gathering place because of the decentralized structure of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS).

Michelie J. Carley, another GSC member, agreed, saying. "With so few built-in accommodations for socializing, graduate students sort of bump around like loose atoms."

GSAS now contributes $50,000 a year--about 25 per cent of the total--to help maintain Harkness Commons, which it shares with the Law School. But Harkness is inconvenient for most GSAS students and has become primarily identified with the Law School, McDonnell said.

A survey distributed to GSAS students at registration in January, 1980 provided the impetus for the Lehman Hall plan, Herman Marshall, secretary of the GSC, said yesterday. The survey "came back with a pretty strong response" in favor of some sort of graduate center, he said.

Organizers hope to move to a more permanent location, either in Lehman Hall's basement or elsewhere, Marshall added. The basement now houses the Life-Long Learning program, which may move to Sever Hall, he said.

McDonnell said the council had hoped to renovate part of Perkins Hall, a graduate doom, for a student center but cancelled the plan because of a lack of funds.