HRE vs. Students

HARVARD Real Estate (HRE)--always keeping a sharp eye on its financial ledger--has raised costs again for organizations thatwant to perform at Sanders Theater, and student groups are understandably angry.

HRE is determined to turn Sanders into a professional venue, and the unfortunate consequence may be a squeezing out of student performers who rely on the building--one of the few on campus available for large events--for their livelihood.

In January 1988, management of Memorial Hall was transferred from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) to HRE. The move was an odd one: HRE traditionally owns and operates the University's non-academic holdings.

College officials said that they had allowed the building to be transferred because of a $7 million renovation underway there.

Whatever the rationale for the transaction, the results have not helped student groups. HRE, which is institutionally imbued with a bottom-line mentality, has taken on an ambitious plan to professionalize Memorial Hall. FAS would never have dreamed of such a project.

WE'RE moving towards a full-service operation in order to compete with other similarly sized halls in the Boston area," said Alisa J. Zimmerman, the HRE-appointed director of Memorial Hall.

Zimmerman's logic is disturbing. Why should Memorial Hall be competing with other "similarly sized halls in the Boston area"? We do not need a well-oiled, glitzy arena at Harvard that can draw lots of off-campus performers.

There is a serious lack of performance space at the University for student groups Harvard loves to tout the diversity of its student body, and musically and theatrically incluined undergraduates certainly figure highly in that diversity. But the University has not backed up its glowing statements with adequate performance space.

Memorial Hall should act as a resource for undergraduates, not as a magnet for off-campus performers who can pay more.

THE nuts and bolts of HRE's new performance space policies may not seem dramatic, but they bely an underlying confusion over priorities. Most of the changes force student groups to pay for HRE-provided services--such as piano moving, concessions and ushering--which the organizations performed on their own before.

And in the past year, HRE has also charged groups for rehearsal time in Sanders Theater. So far Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III has footed the bill, but such intra-Harvard money transfers raise questions about what exactly HRE's role is in this academic community. What is the point of having these buildings if not for students?

According to HRE's own estimates, student groups are facing a 7 to 10 percent increase in facilities costs this year. This is no trifling amount for many student groups that barely keep their heads above water financially.

Zimmerman says that all the new forced costs will benefit student groups. "It will be easier for them to plan their budgets," she says.

Zimmerman's concern for student groups' book-keeping is admirable, but it misses the point by miles.

Performers have not been the only ones to be hurt by HRE's administration. For example, we learned at commencement last year that HRE would no longer allow student body-wide keg parties in the "Great Hall" part of the building. HRE's actions constitute a pattern which is incompatible with the managment of what should be an academic and extracurricular building.

AT commencement ceremonies last June, President Derek C. Bok told the assembled multitude of his "Faustian cycle" of nightmares, in which a slick New York banker urges him to sell the University off bit by bit in return for millions of dollars in new funds.

Bok said the temptation was always there for an institution like Harvard, which has vast resources but is always hungry for more, to fall sway to the banker's logic and slowly let its academic mission deteriorate.

The story is a corny one, but the message is important. It is especially relevant now when it appears that one small part of the University has fallen into its own pathetic Faustian nightmare.

If the University by some twisted strain of logic must allow HRE to manage Memorial Hall, then it should at least keep the corporation on a tight leash.

But a better solution for all involved (except HRE) would be for management of Memorial Hall to be transferred back to FAS.