An added incentive for the centrally located commons was the attempt to increase interaction between first-year students and upperclass students, and between students who reside in different houses.

According to Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III, the commons will provide for first-year students some of the opportunities now available to upperclass students in their houses. "We see the commons as complementing the house system in the center of campus," he says.

In the past, the Square has provided places for students to congregate outside of their houses with faculty and with each other. Epps has lamented that the commercialization of the Square in recent years has deprived students of such gathering places.

And because the commons will become an integral part of student life at Harvard, the planning committee throughout the year called for student input.

"A project can only be as successful as the ideas that are put into it," Parsons says. "And we really wanted to do a lot of consulting before we made hard decisions."

"We advertised meetings, hoping that students would attend and offer their insights," Parsons says. "But very few students showed up."

Jennifer W. Grove '94 represented the Undergraduate Council and Perry S. Chen '98' represented student musical groups on the planning committee, which was chaired by Christoph J. Wolff dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Groups Will Be Displaced

The students played an important role in ensuring that activities which are currently housed in Memorial Hall have facilities during the period of renovation and after the commons is completed. Groups housed in the basement of Memorial Hall will be required to move as early as January of 1994, to allow the building to be prepared for construction.

Some groups may relocate to the now vacant 500-seat Lowell Hall, on the corner of Oxford and Kirkland Streets and the building which now houses Hillel at 74 Mt. Auburn St.

Lowell Hall will be renovated and reopened before construction begins on Alumni Hall, providing performing arts groups with a suitable facility into which they

'Harvard College is undeniably somewhat devoid of unifying institutions.'

MALCOLM A. HEINICKE '93 FORMER UNDERGRADUATE COUNCIL CHAIR can move.

"This is an integral part of the project," Parsons says. "When we are done with the upgrade of Sanders Theatre and the renovation of Lowell Hall, we will have significantly improved the facilities available to the performing arts groups at Harvard."

Parsons says these groups were one of the planning committee's main concerns, as the original plans called for them to be ousted from Memorial Hall with little thought as to where they might end up.

"Because of the exponential growth we've seen in the arts here in recent years, it became obvious that we would have to do something to turn around the costs we would be inflicting on these groups," Parsons says.