Kothavala points to the facts that numbers of undergraduates concentrating in the sciences (except for biochemistry) have been dropping steadily since 1962 but that at the same time the number of people in science courses is increasing or holding constant. A science center oriented towards undergraduate non-science careerists then would make sense.

Carroll Williams, Bussey Professor of Biology, also believes that undergraduate science education will be well served by use of the Science Center as originally planned. Williams contends that undergraduate science students at Harvard have been "historically shortchanged," and that the science center should be "preserved for goals which have been carefully and painfully hammered out in the past decade."

Wald suggests that one way to avoid isolating undergraduates in the Center would be to introduce high-level research groups into the building. Williams strenuously objects to this idea, citing the "expansive" habits of researchteams which "will spread out like an advancing wave and will finally take over the whole." Williams sees the question of distance affecting not the quality of the education but merely the convenience of the professor.

Since plans for a separate biochemistry building were scrapped, discussions of alternatives for the Science Center often mention the possibility of moving the entire biochemistry department in. Williams thinks this influx of the "prima donnas of research" would lead to a tendency to occupy all available space and would destroy the intended emphasis on interdisciplinary undergraduate science. Even Jack Strominger, Professor of Biochemistry and chairman of the Biochemistry department, doesn't particularly want his department to move bodily into the Center. The department just "needs a home," he explains.

Kothavala tendered his resignation last fall, before the present controversy built up, when he realized that the position of director would be primarily an administrative and budgetary function, not one which would allow for educational innovation. The question of how to use the Center was left to Dean Dunlop, who appointed a Faculty task force to consider the objections to the original plan and recommend a new program for how to use the building.

This task force, including two members of the original Ramsey Commission which first recommended the Science Center, began by considering financial problems and cost data for opening and running the Center. Its scope has now been broadened to include recommending any conceivable use for the Center, ranging from going ahead with the original plans to not using the building at all.

According to Frank Westheimer, Loob Professor of Chemistry and chairman of the task force, no alternatives have yet been approved, and all are being judged by criteria which might label each either academically unacceptable, too expensive, or unacceptable to faculty, Administration, or donors. The academic guidelines being used are, simply put, a concern for both concentrators and nonconcentrating undergraduates as well as for relationships with graduate students as sectionmen. Westheimer hopes to have a preliminary report to the Dean by July 1, which should give a good indication of the leanings of the committee.

Should all else fail, one possibility has been offered for the science center which would be financially safe and quite simple: sell it.