Rooms Reopened for New Students

Parts of Apley Court and Claverly Hall deemed too noisy for College students due to neighboring construction will be offered to house students displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby announced Sept. 2 that the College would take in at least 25 students from schools that had to close for the semester due to the hurricane. At the time, Kirby said that housing would be offered on a “space-available” basis.

But as the start of classes approaches, more logistical details of coordinating the relief effort have been revealed, including a plan that would accommodate all visiting students in Harvard-provided housing.

“We are offering students a choice of housing with a family in the area, or in a dorm,” Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 wrote in an e-mail yesterday.

According to Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesman Robert Mitchell, 22 students have accepted offers of special visiting undergraduate status for the semester from a pool of 88, though the admissions office is continuing to process new applications.

Mitchell did not comment on how many had declined the College’s invitation.

Potential students were required to complete the standard visiting student application, but were permitted to self-report information, such as GPA, rendered inaccessible by the hurricane.

Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby told The Crimson last week that the admissions office had received over 250 inquiries about the openings for visiting students.

“Each student has the choice to live on-campus [near] by construction or off campus with a host,” Mitchell said.

Upperclass students who choose to live on campus will be affiliated with either Adams or Lowell Houses, while students who choose to reside off-campus with hosts will be affiliated with Dudley House. All visiting freshmen will be housed in the Yard, Mitchell said.

In March, University Hall announced that 56 beds in Claverly and Apley would be closed for the 2005-06 academic year, after the College performed a noise test simulating sounds of construction equipment to determine which rooms would be most affected. The Hasty Pudding building, located on Holyoke Street adjacent to Claverly and Apley, is undergoing renovations this year.

Mitchell said that the College does not currently intend to alter the construction plans to accommodate the visiting students.

Deputy Dean of the College Patricia O’Brien said that despite the construction noise, visiting students would benefit from selecting the on-campus option that the College is offering.

“This would be wonderful for them as they could really experience undergraduate life at Harvard in a way that would be much more difficult if we were housing them off campus,” O’Brien wrote in an e-mail.

All of Harvard’s undergraduate and graduate schools, with the exception of the Harvard Business School, have announced their intentions to accept displaced students from universities and colleges on the Gulf Coast. In addition, the University pledged on Sept. 2 to match donations of up to $100 to any of eight specific hurricane relief charities.

—Staff writer Joshua P. Rogers can be reached at jprogers@fas.harvard.edu.