"If [changes] were to come up, it is something that we would go over in minute detail, [but]it's not the essence of the current changes," she said.

While the undergraduates involved in the Pudding are losing the complete control they once enjoyed over the Pudding building, Dotson said the graduate board of the institute had little choice but to sign the building over to Harvard.

Dotson said the institute draws its income from ticket sales from Pudding Theatricals and from the building's tenant, the restaurant Upstairs at the Pudding.

"The bottom line is, in [1981] we sold the land. We got a 99 year lease, and it was at commercial rates; that's expensive," he said. "Our ability to pay the rent to a large degree was affected by the restaurant. Unfortunately, the restaurant fell behind, and that in turn infringed upon our ability to pay Harvard."

But one of the owners of Upstairs at the Pudding, Mary-Catherine Deibel denied her restaurant had not paid the institute.

"We are completely current," she said. "We just wrote a rent check on April 1st to the Institute of 1770."

Dotson, in turn, said, "We have disagreements about the restaurant's obligations under the lease."

He said the restaurant's lease expires in September of 2000.

Illingworth said he will assemble a committee in the coming months to examine possible uses for the newly acquired space, but said radical change is unlikely in the short term.

"The most we could do would be to plan over the summer," he said. "It'll be a while before the building is vacated."

And Lewis said he sees FAS' acquisition of the building as a saving grace for the Pudding groups who might have lost the building completely if Harvard not intervened.

"I am, in fact, delighted that we have been able to save the performing groups. Had we not stepped in when we did, the building might have been turned over to non-student use, even commercial use, and the performing groups could have been left with no performance space at all," he wrote.