The Allston Challenge

After absent-mindedly omitting undergraduates from the planning committee charged with investigating the potential for undergraduate housing in Allston, Harvard’s central administration has recently tried to make amends. Two student representatives were promptly added to the committee once the oversight was pointed out, and last month—at the urging of those representatives—Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby invited students to participate in an online survey which attempts to gauge what students might want out of an Allston campus. We are pleased with the new approach; Kirby finally appears to understand that asking for student input instead of presuming to know what students want is a far more diplomatic tact. Still, a fundamental question was missing from the survey: whether or not there should be undergraduate housing in Allston. The absence of that question has left many students puzzled and worried that undergraduate housing in Allston is a foregone conclusion.

It is understandable, if still troubling, that the committee skipped over this essential question—and it’s not only because administrators were afraid of the answer. The structure of the planning process is such that the task force on undergraduate life had to ignore the question of whether undergraduates should live in Allston. Instead, committee members had to begin working on the assumption that undergraduate Houses would be built across the river and from that starting point determine how to create the best possible living environment. University President Lawrence H. Summers called these planning assumptions “hypotheses, not crystallized decisions” in an October address, although his own preferences seem indubitably imprinted. To be fair, we acknowledge the logic here; how can students be asked whether something should exist in Allston while the idea has yet to be fully defined? Still, when the time comes, we hope Summers remains true to his word—giving the bigger question due consideration and properly consulting with students.

In the meantime, we are still rather skeptical of any proposal to move Houses across the river. We worry that the impetus for this particular planning assumption is the enhancement of the Allston campus to the detriment of student life—a desire to exploit the liveliness of college students to enhance an otherwise undesirable locale. As the task force on undergraduate life in Allston approaches its final months before the members write their report, we hope they remain cognizant of students’ numerous concerns. Indeed, we doubt any Allston proposal will get much of a hearing from students without addressing a few essential matters.

First, at least three Houses are needed in Allston to provide the minimum number of students necessary to establish a community. Anything less and Harvard would effectively banish undergraduates to three years of little contact with the rest of the College.

Second, the College must thoroughly consider the merits of enlarging the student body. We are not yet convinced that making Harvard College bigger would in any way make Harvard College better. This question must be settled openly prior to any decisions about making room for a significantly larger student population.

Third, any relocation of undergraduates to Allston must come in tandem with the conversion of the Quad into graduate student housing. The cohesiveness of the College community is already severely disadvantaged by its division into two separate locations—adding a third in Allston will only make matters worse. Allston is beyond remote for those students who live in the Quad—both in distance and in mind—and spreading undergraduates throughout a physical space nearly twice its current area will have disastrous consequences for an already substandard student life. Converting the Quad for alternate usage might be exceedingly expensive, but it must also be a critical component of any final plan.

Fourth, the exact location of Allston Houses matters a lot. Building Houses directly across from existing River Houses (replacing current buildings now part of the Harvard Business School) is likely the only acceptable proposal for an undergraduate community spanning Cambridge and Allston. Building Houses on the existing athletic fields would lead to a troublesome splintering of student life far worse than the present divide.

Finally, the University has acknowledged that any plans for undergraduate housing in Allston will require comprehensive designs to accommodate dramatically increased foot traffic back and forth across the river; the Weeks Memorial Footbridge and the automobile-heavy Larz Anderson Bridge will simply be inadequate. But here, Harvard has the potential to go beyond the bare minimum and demonstrate an expanded commitment to undergraduate life. By making the river the one and only center of campus life, Harvard sets itself up for the opportunity to finally give students something they have long called for: a centrally located student center. If College housing in Allston is indeed inevitable, Harvard should look into developing plans for an exciting new center located along the river bank—or even better above the river itself in the vein of the historic Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy. Harvard should even consider the possibility of building underneath the river itself; the University of Arizona recently completed a cutting-edge 119,000 square foot underground learning center in the heart of its campus.

There is a chance that Harvard could revitalize College life and create a significant new architectural landmark in Boston. But the University’s Allston planners have a lot of problems to solve before undergraduates are convinced that moving across the river is actually in their interest. Indeed, many of the above stipulations are likely prohibitively costly, and that is why many students remain deeply skeptical of Allston Houses. Without monumental capital spending on both sides of the river, the dream of Allston could easily turn into an undergraduate’s worst nightmare.