Study Supports Mem Hall Renovations

Plans to convert Memorial Hall into a student center and dining hall came one step closer to reality recently when the architectural firm overseeing the proposed project determined that it was "feasible."

Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown, the Philadelphia architecture firm hired to plan the renovations, has completed an initial study and decided that the plan is workable, although many of the details remain unresolved.

Despite the positive recommendation from the firm, Harvard officials said that it would most likely take several more years for the plans to become finalized and for construction to actually begin.

The University cannot adopt a final plan until it determines how much money it can raise for the project, said Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III, adding that fundrasing efforts are not yet underway.

The Memorial Hall plan--first detailed in December--arose out of both undergraduate demands for a student center and faculty requests for more office space.

The proposed renovations would fill Memorial Hall with dining facilities for first-year students, a grill, a coffee house with a stage, a game-room and student meeting spaces, said Associate Dean for Physical Resources Phillip J. Parsons.

The Union, which is now used as a first-year student dining hall, would be converted into a humanities center, providing office accommodations for faculty and administrators in the humanities.

The Memorial Hall plan would provide faculty members in the humanities about 30 percent more space, Parsons said.

Next fall, an informal committee composed of Epps, Parsons, Dean of Freshpersons Henry C. Moses, two Undergraduate Council members and a member of Students Concerned for a Student Center (SCSC) will meet to discuss the best way to implement the plans, said Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57.

Some students have criticized the plan, saying the University should instead create an independent student center separate from dining facilities. They have suggested such sites as the A. Lawrence Lowell Lecture Hall near the Science Center and the former Gulf station site near the Union.

But Jeffrey C. Yang '89, co-chair of SCSC, said he was pleased with the firm's feasibility study and thought that an adequate student center could be housed in Memorial Hall.

Yang said that he was pleasantly surprised that the proposed student center included many "amenities." He said that he had thought initially that a renovated Memorial Hall would include little more than a new dining hall for first-year students.

Yang said that students should support the Mem Hall plan while continuing to push for student input into the planning process.

"The ideal would be a separate building," said Yang, "but we have to work with what we have. The leaders of student organizations must try to keep this issue alive as something that will significantly affect student life."