Cacophony Irks Clav Residents

For some students this year, dormitory life will be accompanied by an unwelcome soundtrack.

Construction work on 10-12 Holyoke Street, which was once the Hasty Pudding building, is on schedule. But for now, many students living in nearby Claverly Hall have no choice but to endure the noise.

“It’s really bad—there are jackhammers at 7 a.m.,” said Marco P. Basile ’08, a Lowell resident living in Claverly this year. “Right now there’s a wonderful crane right outside my window that I wake up to,” he added.

Rooms on the back side of Claverly, where Basile now lives, were unoccupied last year.

“I don’t understand why last year, these rooms weren’t lived in because of noise, but this year they are,” he said.

Basile said that spare rooms should be made available for students who wish to move. “I wake up at 7 a.m. to compose letters to ask to change rooms,” he said.

And if Basile remains in Claverly, he thinks he should get “perks.”

“They should make this a two-man suite instead of a three-man one,” he said.

But some students say that the construction noise is tolerable.

“We were still pretty pleased with our rooms,” Jessica A. Estep ’09 said. “I think it’s going to be a problem for one of my roommates because she studies all night and sleeps during the day, but it’s not going to be that much of a problem for me.”

Construction isn’t the only drawback of Claverly life—the dorms are also in close proximity to the noisy headquarters of the Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine.

“With Clav, you eventually have to just get used to all the noise you hear—construction, talking, music, the Lampoon, and street noise, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” said Omar M. Abdelsamad ’09.

Construction on the building began in summer of 2005. According to FAS spokesman Robert Mitchell, work will be completed in spring of 2007. The New College Theatre will offer a 272-seat performance hall, more backstage space, and offices for student clubs.

—Staff writer Elaine Chen can be reached at chen23@fas.harvard.edu.