Students Bristle Over New Construction

Sentiments familiar to residents of Cambridge enveloped students in Leverett, Dunster, and Mather Houses this spring, when they got their first look at the designs for a new six-story graduate student housing complex on a lot facing Cowperthwaite Street, where a small park, several houses, and a parking lot are now located.

Students expressed shock and a sense that Harvard Real Estate Services (HRES) withheld important information about future plans from a key group of stakeholders.

“The way it happened made it seem as though it was not an oversight but that we were specifically kept from knowing,” says Lauren P.S. Epstein ’07, who lives in Leverett House and chairs the Undergraduate Council (UC)’s Campus Life Committee.

Harvard officials met with House masters throughout the spring, distributed an information packet to students in April, and visited Dunster Dining Hall in April to meet with students.

“Regretfully, these discussions didn’t take place earlier in the process,” Harvard spokeswoman Lauren Marshall wrote in an e-mail to The Crimson in May.

The new building is part of an effort by the University to house 50 percent of its graduate students by 2011 in order to stay competitive with peer institutions.

Harvard currently houses only 38 percent of its graduate students, though a survey conducted in 2001 revealed that 75 percent would like to live in Harvard-owned housing.

All the rooms in Mather and Dunster Houses that face the site on Cowperthwaite Street, as well as much of Leverett F and G towers, will be subject to “high impact noise” between September and next June, according to the packet given to students. The building is scheduled for completion in 2007.

Construction crews will begin work at 8 a.m. Monday through Friday, and delay that start time by one hour on Saturday.

This spring, students complained that the early-morning “pinging” of preliminary site preparations was already disturbing their sleep.

Students met with Cambridge residents in May to discuss strategies for dealing with the University, and then organized meetings with University President Lawrence H. Summers, Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby, and Deputy Dean of the College Patricia O’Brien to present their concerns about the size of the building and the impact of construction on student life.

Yet while the efforts of undergraduates to diminish the height and width of the building failed because they came too late—after the conclusion of extensive negotiations between Harvard, Cambridge, and residents of the Riverside neighborhood—students say they are hopeful that their protest has shown the University that undergraduates expect future involvement in the process.

“I know the University has a really difficult and delicate relationship with the Cambridge community,” says Aaron D. Chadbourne ’06, who chairs the UC’s Student Affairs Committee. “But it was unfortunate that [in focusing on getting the designs past the City Council], they neglected their responsibility to the Harvard community.”

According to students, the administrators proposed setting up a committee of students to address construction concerns and talk to HRES.

Students say they intend to focus their efforts in the summer and throughout the fall on mitigating the inconveniences of construction, including pressuring the College to install thicker windows in Leverett’s G-tower and delay the start time of construction until 9 a.m. They may also seek financial compensation that would go toward keeping House libraries open.

“I think one of the results of this is surely the desire on the part of the central administration to have consultation,” Kirby said in an interview last month before meeting with the students.

Chadbourne, who also heads the UC’s Safety Committee, says he has spoken with Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd to address the safety concerns associated with closing the path next to Leverett House during construction and having a narrower, 30-foot passageway once the building is completed.

But Dunster House resident Erinn M.M. Wattie ’06 says she thinks that students will have to push aggressively for reforms to take place.

“It’s been really hard to pin down, to identify who in the administration is responsible for making the building so close to Leverett House and so high,” Wattie says, pointing to a decentralized bureaucratic structure with which Cambridge residents have often been frustrated.

The long-awaited renovation of the Hasty Pudding building on Holyoke Street is prompting an additional housing crunch at the River. Parts of Apley Court and Claverly Hall will be closed due to noise next year. Some Lowell and Adams House residents will be relocated to DeWolfe, and Lowell sophomores will be moved to the part of Apley Court that does not face the construction.

In addition, 14 more members of the Class of 2008 than usual were placed in the Quad, and a number of Winthrop residents will be housed in a white house along Memorial Drive usually reserved for visiting faculty.

—Staff writer Natalie I. Sherman can be reached at nsherman@fas.harvard.edu.