A couch with pillows decorates the hallway of the IRC office. Cluttered with papers and other junk, the hallway leads into four other rooms—a tiny closet for back issues, the room used by the International Review, a desk used by the Harvard Program for International Education (HPIE) and the main IRC office, which has enough space for three chairs and a desk.

“You can imagine how hot it gets here during the summer or when this place is filled with people gearing up for production,” says Howard A. Levine ’03, president of IRC.

But Levine says he would not trade the space for anything.

“Space in Harvard Square is very expensive and in the Yard is nearly impossible,” Levine says. “We have the biggest space and it’s central on campus.”

Down the hall from the IRC, the Harvard Foundation is less enthusiastic about the condition of its offices—three small rooms about the size of Canaday singles.

In one room, white file boxes are piled up to the ceiling, with a life-size cardboard Veritas shield and a Chinese fan floating amid the files.

The two other rooms are taken up almost entirely by a few desks and file boxes that have overflowed from the other room. Last October, Illingworth notified the IRC—which is the umbrella organization for groups including Harvard Model United Nations, the International Review, HPIE, the Model Security Council, Harvard Model Congress and Harvard Model Congress Europe—that they might have to move out of the Yard.

He told the IRC that the Harvard Foundation needed more space and the IRC would have to give up its office—a decision that angered many students.

“We support the Harvard Foundation, but we’re confused by why the administration needs to move 12 student groups in order to benefit one group that is not student-run,” said former IRC President Michael J. Gilbert ’02 at the time of the announcement.

But the IRC insisted on keeping its space and, after initial signs that Illingworth would not budge, managed to convince administrators to let them stay.

“Having shown them around our office, they seemed to understand that cutting space wouldn’t work,” Levine says.

With the IRC staying put for now and administrators talking about finding Yard space for the Study Abroad Office—which no longer reports to the Office of Career Services where it is now located—Illingworth says the College has begun a search for a space to rent for the Harvard Foundation.

Dr. S. Allen Counter, who is director of the Harvard Foundation, says the College found one space on Plympton Street that the Harvard Foundation could rent, but he isn’t happy about the prospect.

“The student officers of the Harvard Foundation and the student interns all prefer to have an office that is readily accessible to students in Harvard Yard,” Counter says.

Other groups inhabiting Thayer basement are not living any more luxuriously than the Foundation—and have had to do just as much shuffling. Demon, a quarterly humor magazine, was forced to move out of the office it shared with the conservative journal the Salient into that of the liberal Perspective.