Administrators Consider Storage Changes

In a year marked by missing futons and fire code concerns, Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) authorities are considering sweeping changes in House summer storage policies.

Citing a lack of space, the FAS Office of Physical Resources is exploring the possibility of restricting storage to students who live over 200 miles from Cambridge, charging students per unit of storage and even outsourcing storage so that some students will no longer be able to leave boxes in their Houses.

Administrators said no decisions have yet been made, and no major changes will go into effect this coming summer.

“Discussions exploring future policy changes are still very much in the preliminary stage,” said Zachary M. Gingo ’98, who is manager of administrative operations at the FAS Office of Physical Resources.

“For 2003, it’s going to look almost identical to what it has been in the past,” he said. “Looking ahead to 2004, or 2005, it’s hard to tell at this point.”

Gingo said the discussions come just one year after Harvard’s decision to standardize and clarify guidelines for storage this coming summer.

Students who live more than 100 miles away from Harvard are currently allowed to leave six boxes and some oversized items, such as sofas, in storage in their Houses over the summer. These specifications are an attempt to better delineate storage policies that have in the past gone largely unenforced, Gingo said.

The new guidelines, which will also prevent students from keeping their furniture and boxes in hallways and other forbidden areas, were developed last year after a citation from the Cambridge Fire Department, and they take into consideration mounting legal and safety concerns, Gingo said.

“Last year, the change was that in the past there had been no stated policy. This is a clarification of policy,” he said.

Gingo said the new rules will affect only those few students who wait until the last minute to store their belongings—some of whom may find there is no room left.

But administrators fear that this change will not be enough to ease the space crunch, as more and more students seek to store their belongings in the Houses over the summer.

“We need to think creatively about alternate ways of storing students’ belongings,” said Thomas A. Dingman ’67, associate dean of the College responsible for housing. “However, there is no plan right now, other than a renewed sense of the need to deal with the problem.”

One idea under consideration is to extend the minimum distance a student must live from campus in order to be eligible for storage from 100 to 200 miles.

Another suggestion has been to adopt a policy like that of Dartmouth, where students are required to pay $12 per box for storage. Charging per box would, according to Gingo, serve to “put a value on storage, and might make students reconsider how much they want to store.”

Dingman said that subcontracting storage space also remains a possibility despite the fact that it will anger students.

“If we were to move to a different plan, we’d be able to take care of the things we do have more safely,” he said.

Any proposal for changing the current policy will have to be reviewed by Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 as well as various committees, including the Committee on House Life.

Rohit Chopra ’04, chair of the Undergraduate Council’s Student Affairs Committee, said the council is aware of the problem and expects to address the issue soon. He said the council will elect student members of the Committee on House Life next Tuesday.

Council President Sujean S. Lee ’03 said the council wants to avoid drastic changes to the current storage policy.

“We are looking for a compromise that would enable students to store their things conveniently, safely and cheaply,” Lee said.

Other students said they would be upset if they were forced to pay for storage or move their belongings out of the Houses.

“It would probably cause more problems for students to find alternative place to store, on top of exams in the spring,” said Sarah K. Holbrook ’05, who is from North Dakota and left items in Leverett House storage last summer. “And then there are financial considerations.”