The Malkin Athletic Center.

Associate Dean of the College David P. Illingworth ’71 says he cannot enter the HMV on Mt. Auburn Street in Harvard Square without a sigh.

Every time he walks up the stairs to the second-story record store, he sees the empty space where a clothing store used to be located and his mind jumps to the College’s dire need of space.

The College currently has 250 registered student groups, with only a few offices for them in the basements of Thayer and Holworthy Halls and common space in the Houses and classrooms.

The situation is a sticky one. Groups move from office to office, House to House, without any assurance they will have a desk next year, or a piano tomorrow. Other groups are evicted from their workplaces and then granted permission to stay.

And the situation is not improving.

The College’s lease of the Agassiz Theater and Rieman Dance Center from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study will soon expire. Practice and performance space for dance and theater groups is already tight.

The only building projects anticipated to increase student space are far from being completed. In fact, they have not even been started.

The Malkin Athletic Center (MAC), long considered the biggest waste of space this side of the Charles River, and the Hasty Pudding building, which is so dilapidated that Illingworth has permanently posted a security guard on duty there, are both slated to be renovated.

But the MAC renovations cannot begin until the varsity volleyball, fencing and wrestling teams, which practice and compete in the MAC, find a new home across the river.

And the Pudding’s renovations are in limbo until the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), which purchased the crumbling facility over two years ago, can raise enough money to cover its cost.

Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 has said finding space for students is one of his top priorities.

But for now, the University’s expansion rests as the great hope on the horizon for the College—and its many student groups—to gain some much-needed office and practice space.

“It’s a holding pattern,” Illingworth says. “There isn’t much that can be done about this until Allston is developed.”

Not in My House

Making matters worse, many students say, is the that complicated House bureaucracy gets in the way of groups effectively using House common spaces like Junior Common Rooms (JCRs)—a significant problem given Lewis often cites space in the Houses as the answer to calls for a student center.