The activists have moved on.

In fact, these days, Joan Pickett is surprised that anyone’s even asking about the tunnel that Harvard wants to dig under busy Cambridge Street.

Pickett is president of the Mid-Cambridge Neighborhood Association (MCNA), which for years led a campaign against the government center Harvard is building on the northeast fringe of campus.

The new center is going ahead—the wrecking balls moved in last week to clear away the lots where its two main buildings will go. The tunnel that is supposed to connect the buildings once preoccupied community members, but now it’s not even an issue for Pickett and her fellow neighborhood activists.

“We think it’s dead,” she says.

Yet Pickett is quick to add that she and the neighborhood association are keeping a watchful eye on Harvard and its new center.

“I think that we remain concerned about whether the tunnel is truly dead or not,” she says.

Theoretically, the Center for Government and International Studies (CGIS) might still get its tunnel.

Ever since the Cambridge City Council first talked about the tunnel last December, councillors have opposed the plan. Still, they have yet to formally vote it down.

Week after week, the tunnel simply sits on the council’s list of unfinished business.

And as far as Pickett and other neighborhood activists are concerned, it will remain unfinished.

“We do not anticipate that it will be brought up for a vote with the city council,” she says. “It’s our understanding that it’s unlikely to be brought up for a vote at all.”

So the MCNA has moved on, now focusing its efforts on new projects, including a city library planned for another part of the neighborhood.

For nine months, the tunnel was the project’s Achilles’ heel—literally the only piece of CGIS awaiting permission after last December.

Late this summer, Harvard at last received all the permissions required to build a tunnel-free CGIS. But University officials still insist that the tunnel is still crucial and they haven’t given up.