Yet this alone cannot account for all the lack of progress. In Claverly, for example, expenditures have already been approved but changes have yet to be implemented. Epps says, "the work has been so slow in coming that I have asked Mr. Hall for a trouble shooter. We need to decide firmly that matters of personal safety must be given top priority, and apparently they're not."

There are similar situations throughout the University. Sarah Forsman '76, a Quincy House student says that in Quincy "no security measures have been taken. Certain doors were supposed to be locked and they haven't been. I've really been disillusioned with the whole process. We've been given this line about how we should really think about security, and nobody's done anything."

Another case in point is the Mather House parking lot. In the last few months three cars have been stolen and another burglarized. Catherine Blake, a Dunster House tutor, wrote to Hall on September 28 following the theft of her car from the Mather lot, and requested relatively simple security improvements. The work has yet to be done.

She says, "It's probably a combination of Harvard's usual slowness in these matters, Steven Hall, and the administration which goes very slowly and doesn't seem to give very good reasons for it. It's very frustrating."

"There's no sign that Steven Hall or anybody up there cares," she continues. "They don't even take the time to explain the delays."

Steven Hall did not return Crimson calls asking him to comment on security at Harvard.

This week another car was stolen from the Mather lot.

Yet, beyond the obvious problems with Harvard's huge bureaucracy in responding quickly to security requests, the broad question of security is a difficult one. Over and over again masters and students are forced to choose between protection--in the form of additional deterrents--and an open community.

One method of quickly and inexpensively coping with crime is to lock the outside of Houses all the time. Yet there are problems with this approach. Many students not only complain vocally about the jail-like atmosphere this would cause, but also question its effect on deterring crime.

It is not at all clear that locking the Houses is the correct response to the problem of security. It is also not clear why the University is lagging in taking other steps--such as bolstering the locks of individual suites in all the Houses--to make less mandatory the locking of outer doors. The only thing clear is that the University's days of crime-free dorms and open gates are over.

Unfortunately the administration's actions do not reflect that fact. And it seems only too clear that it might take a really serious crime to provoke the University into taking some necessary steps.