Heating, plumbing and ventilation systems will be upgraded, and full sprinkler systems will be installed. Some dorms will also be made accessible to disabled students with elevators or special suites.

Some changes will be more individual. Thayer's unused top floor will be transformed into attic suites with skylights. The Canaday basements will be refurbished to create more office space for student organizations. Hurl-but will get a new entrance easier to find than the old one.

Summer of Renovations

Seven buildings--nearly half of all the existing first-year dorms--will be under the hammer this summer, and the effects have already become noticeable.

Many alumni visiting the University for reunions, for example, had to be housed in upperclass housing, as their dorms underwent renovation. Therefore, instead of allowing undergraduates remaining at Harvard over Commencement for activities to stay in their own houses, the College assigned each group several rooms in one house.

And some high school students attending Harvard's summer school program, traditional denizens of the Yard, are being housed in nearby upperclass houses.

Whatever Harvard would not be able to deal with, however, would be a snag in the plans that put considerably more housing offline on September 13 than had been predicted.

For, in mid-September more than 1,600 members of the class of 1997 will arrive to take up residence at Harvard, and their tuition-spending parents expect more than an excuse and a tent. Harvard, after all, is not a commuter campus. The upperclass houses and overflow housing are filled to the seams come late September.

Many things could delay the renovation--freak accidents, unforeseen glitches, labor strikes, shoddy workmanship. Harvard Real Estate and College officials know, though, that if a major delay does occur, they will most likely end up having to explain it to the national media, as well as to parents and alumni.

Thus, time is a key factor, although money is certainly important too. And, of course, renovations must done skillfully and well, lest the dorms begin to fall apart in a few years.

All of these considerations led to the formation of the Project-Labor Agreement between Harvard and a number of area unions. In the $80 million agreement, Harvard agrees to use only union labor to renovate the dorms and Holyoke Center.

In return, the unions agreed to several concessions. Strikes, a major time-waster, are prohibited, as are protests. Workers agreed to work at somewhat unusual hours so as not to disturb Yard or neighborhood residents. And--the money-saving part--workers agree to take a 10 percent wage cut on all renovations under the pact.

The agreement was a new chapter in Harvard building and union relations, one which both sides seem to welcome. "First and foremost, Harvard wants to get the highest quality of workmanship at the lowest price," says David A. Zewinski, senior vice president for property operations and construction. "It has worked fine."

"I think it's working very well," says Mark L. Ehrlich, business manager of the Local 40 Carpenters' Union. "The buildings need the experience Harvard can provide and [Harvard gets] 10 percent wage cuts."

But while union members say they saw the agreement as a model for future contracts, a step in the road away from the lowest bid to the best workmanship, University officials view it as something to be expanded to fit some other projects--but only a selected few.