Lack of Funds May Delay Quad Repairs

While Cabot House's newly rehabilitated Briggs Hall opened to gala celebration yesterday, financial problems continue to delay renovations of remaining Radcliffe Quad buildings, Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57 said last night.

Speaking at a Cabot House Committee meeting, Jewett said officials are particularly concerned about the schedule of renovations to North House and a proposed joint Cabot-North kitchen.

Although he estimated that Cabot House's six dormitories will be refurbished by the spring of 1988, Jewett said the College will not have a "definite answer" on the entire renovations schedule until the end of the term. "Our goal is to have it done and done as soon as it was planned," he said.

The dean told the more than 20 assembled Cabot House residents that work on Cabot's Bertrani and Bernard Halls will begin on schedule this week.

The College planned to million redoing the Quad. But the completion of Briggs, Barnard and Bertram will dry up the $12 million already raised, and it is unclear where the remaining $15 million will come from.

The completion time of Cabot renovations also remains up in the air because officials have not decided whether to construct a proposed joint Cabot-North House kitchen, Jewett said.

Jewett cited three reasons for the financial setbacks: an original underestimate of the renovations cost, not enough house rehabilitations monies gathered, during last year's $350 million Harvard campaign, and cutbacks in alternate methods of funding the project such as government loans.

Cabot House residents expressed concern that alumni gifts may not have been as great because alumni prefer to give to their own Houses' funds, rather than to the Quad's coffers. But Jewett said most of the other donations were given for other projects, not other houses.

"It was a project that was a rehabilitation of an existing system, as opposed to other projects which seemed to have a little life," Jewett said. Alumni might also have channelled their funds to other projects because of cutbacks in education at the time of the fundraising drive.

However, officials hope that North House will find a benefactor wanting to donate substantial funds, and his name, to the undergraduate dormitory. "It's happened in the past," Jewett joked to the Cabot House residents.

But no matter when the money is raised, Jewett said that the College is "committed to not watering down the quality of what we do to save money." He cited Canaday Hall and Mather House as victims of this syndrome.

"Briggs is a building that will stand up and meet quality and be a solid thing," Jewett said. "We would rather go slowerand do a good job than have everything fallingdown around us in five years."

Responding to fears that the College mightpoint to Briggs as a "band-aid" for the Quadproblems, Jewett said, "New Briggs is a goodstart, but it is clearly not a solution to theproblems here. I don't think that anybody thinksof it as an answer."

Around the Quad

Later on in the evening, Jewett paid a visit toCurrier House to garner student opinion on thesearch for a new master to replace Dudley R. andGeorgene B. Herschbach, who announced last monththat they will step down from the post at the endof the school year.

More than 50 Currier House residents packed theSenior Common Room for the meeting, which had beenwritten up in the House newsletter and which wasclosed to the press