Then during the summer of 1974, Harvard toldKazana that they would no longer pay her. Withouta pay-check, Kazana had to leave Cambridge and gohome. And many students returned in the fallunaware that the center had effectively been shutdown.
"The University really betrayed theAfrican-American population very significantly:raising $150,000 and then feeling as though thatwas adequate," Kazana said this week. "That wastotally inadequate. They never really made aserious and a constant or a long term effort tomake sure that the center became endowed."
"[The closing of the center] was a realtragedy," she adds. "It has served to deny anenrichment of every African-American student to gothrought the campus since then."
After the Afro-American Cultural Center died,the question of who would occupy 74 Mt. Auburn wasanswered.
The Hillel was able to begin renovationstotalling $600,000 late in 1978 after trading itshouses on Bryant St. to Harvard for the right tolease the building for 99 years, according toRabbi Sally Finestone of the Hillel.
And now the Hillel has made another trade withHarvard. Under this new deal, the Hillel gives upits remaining rights to lease 74 Mt. Auburn forthe right to build Rosovsky Hall on the plot ofland on the corner of Mt. Auburn and Plymptonbehind the Fly Club.
When the Hillel finalized its plans to move outtwo or three years ago, Finestone said the studentleadership of the Hillel suggested that theUniversity turn the building into a multiculturalcenter.
"There was a general consensus among Hillelstudents that [a multicultural center] was a goodidea," Finestone said.
But Finestone added that the administrationmade the decision to use the building for otherpurposes.
"The African-American community didn't have thealumni base that could fund a project like[Rosovsky Hall]," Finestone said. "Therefore Ithink the University should take a much moreactive role in helping them find a building."
Some minority group leaders now says they needa center. And they blame the sameadministrators--including Dean of Students ArchieC. Epps III--for not giving them one.
"[Epps] was an enemy of the effort [for a ThirdWorld Cultural Center] from start to finish,"Kazana said. "He was part of its demise."
And Hyewon T. Chong '95, who supports the ideaof a minority student center, says today: "Harvardshould extend its commitment to its minoritystudents as other universities have."
In the meantime, the Hillel is doing what itcan to share its facilities with other groups.
"One of the strategic plans that studentleadership of the Hillel has is that the newbuilding be used by a lot more organizations thanthe Hillel," Finestone said.
So unless the Harvard-Radcliffe Office for theArts becomes a multicultural center, it doesn'tappear that a minority student center will ever belocated in the building at 74 Mt. Auburn.
Abigail R. Rezneck contributed to thereporting of this story