Dilapidated Dorms: How Harvard Undergrads Cope with Run-Down Housing
Some students say they’ve grown accustomed to living with rodents and the occasional maintenance problem in dilapidated houses. But for others, housing problems raise broader concerns about how run-down living spaces may detract from quality of life at Harvard.
Alden C. Codding ’27 said that when the doorknob on the inside of her bedroom door in Straus Hall stopped working, she and her roommate found themselves locked inside their room.
Codding called the entrapment, which required outside assistance to free them, a “huge fire hazard.” Yard Ops — responsible for maintenance of more than 40 Faculty of Arts and Sciences buildings and freshman dorms — fixed the doorknob three weeks later, only for it to break “within the hour,” leading to Codding and her suitemate becoming trapped in the room for a second time.
Codding’s experience reflects just one of the growing body of student complaints about the state of housing at Harvard.
Harvard’s undergraduate housing options — the freshmen dorms in Harvard Yard, 12 upperclassmen Houses, and a co-op at Dudley Community — create “vibrant, unique, and supportive communities” for the vast majority of students who live on-campus, according to the College’s Dean of Students Office website.
But student frustrations with Harvard housing range from pest and maintenance issues to concerns about overcrowding and accessibility even in the College’s renovated living spaces.
“I can’t even count how many times we’ve seen them,” Sarah L. Cho ’27 said of mice in her dorm. “I, myself, in my own single within the suite have caught five.”
Though six of the Houses have undergone full or partial renovations as part of Harvard’s more than $1 billion House Renewal project, half of the College’s Houses remain in a state of disrepair. The freshmen dorms in the Yard are in a similar state, and no plan exists for their renovation.
“We recognize that housing matters can be stressful for some students and coordinate across departments to support the many components of the residential communities to address issues,” Harvard College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo wrote in an emailed statement to The Crimson.
In interviews with The Crimson, more than 20 students spoke about the state of Harvard’s undergraduate dorms. Some say they’ve grown accustomed to living with rodents and the occasional maintenance problem in dilapidated houses. But for others, housing problems raise broader concerns about how run-down living spaces may detract from quality of life at Harvard.
‘A DIY Thing’
Rodents like mice and rats — common in the City of Cambridge — are no stranger to Harvard’s campus buildings and dormitories. Students have continually found ways to manage infestations, sometimes foregoing a call to Yard Ops and instead opting to take matters into their own hands.
Sungjoo Yoon ’27 said he and his roommates nicknamed one of the mice in his Straus Hall dorm “Stuart Little” following a number of unsuccessful attempts to trap the intruder.
“We tried literally everything,” Yoon said. “And at some point, we were just like, I guess we live with these critters and it’s fine.
Luke R. Calamita ’24, recalled his time as a freshman in Stoughton Hall, where he once “caught a mouse literally every day for eight days straight.”
Calamita added that mouse traps installed by Yard Ops were unhelpful, saying that he made baiting, trapping, and disposing of mice “a DIY thing.”
Frequent rodent sightings are not unique to the freshman dorms in the Yard. Sanjana Singh ’26, who lives in Kirkland House, said she has gotten used to seeing pests in House common spaces.
Singh added that she has dealt with recurring maintenance issues in her room, including a defunct heater that required multiple visits from maintenance workers to restore her room’s heat during the winter.
“They couldn’t figure out what was going on,” Singh said. “Eventually, it did end up working but definitely didn’t seem like it was functioning at its highest ability.”
“Ensuring a clean and healthy living space for students and working area for staff is always a priority,” Palumbo, the College spokesperson, wrote. “The University takes several steps to mitigate pest issues, including the assignment of pest control and custodial crews making regular visits and treating points of entry.”
Kirkland, which was completed in 1931, is one of six houses that has not undergone renovations under House Renewal.
“There are some parts of the house that kind of look like it’s kind of falling apart — there’s a lot of holes in the walls, like, in the rooms,” Singh said.
Aside from rodents, Yoon found himself dealing with both a burst pipe and a faulty window that had “been built incorrectly.” The leaky pipe resulted in a liquid with a “really funny” smell dripping from his bathroom ceiling, while the window — which does not close properly — led to Yoon returning from winter break to “a mound of snow” on his bed.
Yoon said Yard Ops was unable to fix the window until summer, and instead advised him to move his bed elsewhere in the room.
“We ended up just stuffing the window with a bunch of paper towels,” Yoon said. “It sounds bad, but you deal with it.”
‘Not Accessible To Most People’
For some students, the shortcomings of Harvard’s housing are better characterized by a failure to support those requiring accommodations and accessibility.
Emma M. Vrabel ’25 said she “loves” living in Lowell House — where renovations were completed in 2019 — but added that Harvard’s undergraduate housing falls short of her expectations since “it’s not accessible to most people.”
Vrabel cited an insufficient number of automatic door openers, elevators that don’t access every floor of some buildings, and a bike ramp in Kirkland that she says is too steep for wheelchair users as examples of where Harvard lacks accessibility.
“Every House renewal renovation meets or exceeds the most stringent of the relevant accessibility codes,” Palumbo wrote in the statement. “The university has been working expeditiously and methodically to renovate each of the Houses. If a student has a challenge, they should report it right away to their Building Manager or Resident Dean.”
Harvard’s Disability Access Office is responsible for ensuring accessibility and individual accommodations for students, who can request living accommodations to meet their accessibility needs.
Still, Vrabel sees room for improvement.
“I don’t think the timeline for renovations reflects the urgency of creating that sort of accessibility,” she said.
Other students said Harvard housing sometimes fails to provide for individualized accessibility needs and accommodations.
Fable J. Perkins ’27, who lived in gender-inclusive housing this past academic year, said the dorm’s gendered restrooms forced them and their suitemates to use the restroom that aligned with the gender they were assigned at birth.
“That was definitely the one place that I was more consistently misgendered,” Perkins added.
Palumbo wrote that the College affirms that “every student should see and feel that they belong at Harvard, and we work with our students to understand the best approach, guided by what they identify as their needs.”
Eunice S. Chon ’25-’26, the co-advocacy chair of the Harvard Undergraduate Disability Justice Club, is working with the DSO to address accessibility concerns. In February, she helped organize a forum where students could discuss their concerns about residential and sensory accommodations with administrators.
Chon said the DSO is working with HUDJ, but acknowledged limitations due to “the nature of the old buildings.”
“The experiences of students with disabilities — it’s just not something that Harvard kept in mind when building this place,” she added.
Making the Most of Disruption
Despite many students’ frustrations with their dorm’s state of disrepair or lack of accommodations, most were intent on making the most of House life during their time at Harvard.
Codding said a “really wonderful thing” has been living with people she “learned a lot from and definitely grown with.” She added that the house system is “super cool,” and said she’s ready to be more involved in House life after moving from the Yard to the recently renovated Dunster House.
But for others, House Renewal threatens to disrupt house life. The ongoing renovation of Adams House has pushed many of its residents into overflow housing at The Inn at Harvard. In February, Harvard announced that the initial plans for a renovation of Eliot House are underway.
“I’m going to be in overflow housing junior and senior year as a result of Eliot House renovations, which isn’t the worst thing in the world,” Ari C. Desai ’27 said. “But it would be fun to get to live in Eliot for the rest of my time at Harvard.”
Chon, a Kirkland resident who was pushed into overflow housing at the Prescotts this past year, said she felt isolated from the rest of her classmates living in Kirkland.
“You’re not going to get a sense of community when you live in swing housing,” Chon said.
Many students come together to commiserate over Harvard’s imperfect dorm life. Codding said that she “clicked well” with her randomly assigned suitemates.
“I had a very close-to-ideal situation in terms of the three people that I spent so much time with,” she said.
Yoon said he’s “appreciative” of what Harvard’s housing offers despite the maintenance and rodent issues he’s had to deal with.
“I’ve lived in so many worse places in my life. It really isn’t the end of the world to have to take a cold shower in the morning and for a pipe to burst,” he said.
—Staff writer Michelle N. Amponsah can be reached at michelle.amponsah@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @mnamponsah.
—Staff writer Madeleine A. Hung can be reached at madeleine.hung@thecrimson.com.