As varsity athletes compete with recreational needs in limited, dilapidated buildings and undergraduate dancers face the prospect of having no place to waltz when they lose their main dance space in two years, some say Harvard risks alienating prospective applicants unless it provides adequate space for student activities.

Lewis, who has fought an uphill battle for increased undergraduate space during his eight-year tenure, says nothing less than Harvard’s reputation is at stake.

“The deficits [in space] become even more compelling when viewed in the context of what our competitors are doing,” he wrote in a February memo to the University’s top planner Kathy Spiegelman, referring to recently-built student centers at Columbia and Princeton. “Harvard’s standing as the premier college in America, on which so much of the University’s reputation rests, should not be taken for granted as invulnerable if the problems discussed here are not addressed by University planners.”

The Space Age

The space crunch began as early as the 1970s when Harvard became responsible for most aspects of Radcliffe undergraduates’ lives, a change that swelled the College’s ranks by 10 percent, Lewis argued in the memo to Spiegelman.

The memo traces a pattern of drastic conversion of square footage allotted to students into faculty office and research space despite skyrocketing extracurricular participation.

“The priority placed on faculty needs over student needs is completely understandable,” he writes, “but the current zero-sum game cannot, I think, be played indefinitely to the College’s detriment.”

The broad shift from extracurricular to academic space is continuing. Plans for two new science buildings in the North Yard recently received approval, and the Science Center is currently undergoing an expensive multi-year renovation.

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study’s reclamation of the buildings in Radcliffe Yard—all of which were at one point facilities dedicated to undergraduates—is one of the most pressing of such situations, Lewis says. Radcliffe has redefined its mission and will now focus on advanced graduate studies and research.

This fall, the Institute decided not to renew FAS’s lease on the Rieman Center for the Performing Arts, the primary space Harvard’s dancers use for classes, rehearsals and performances. The move could leave student dancers without a home come June 2005 if administrators can’t find a replacement.

The space has been used by dancers for over a century and underwent substantial and expensive upgrades just a few years ago.

Though administrators say they are hopeful that a space will be found—and University President Lawrence H. Summers has promised to secure a replacement by the deadline—an adequate dance facility needs a large stage, a high ceiling and expensive flooring, meaning that a replacement will require a large commitment of time and money to create.

Dancers have organized letter-writing campaigns, met with administrators and tried to attract attention to their cause.

Office for the Arts (OFA) Dance Program Director Elizabeth W. Bergmann says the situation demonstrates how easily undergraduate needs can be forgotten in high-level negotiations, such as the 1999 merger talks between Radcliffe and Harvard.

“In the merger, whoever gave away the dance space…made the problem,” she says. “Some group of people let this slip through…The powers that be now will have to pay for that mistake.”