“[We’re] encouraging [the] Administration to give us resources to maintain space,” he says.

But funding House gyms is only a short term solution, Chopra says, and there is still no long-term plan. Crowding has persisted at the MAC—to the point Chopra calls unsafe and “unacceptable”—and House gyms will never be able to offer a swimming pool or fitness classes as the larger facility does.

During the 2000-2001 academic year, then-Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles commissioned a space planning firm to draft renovation plans to increase the amount of recreational space available in the building.

After several delays, that report has finally been completed; though its suggestions have not yet been made public, Lewis wrote in his memo to Spiegelman that the firm found that Harvard meets only 25 percent of the exercise needs of its students.

But regardless of strategy, opening up space in the MAC will require the varsity wrestling, fencing, water polo and volleyball teams to move across the river to join the other varsity sports. Such an option would entail significant alteration to the current athletic facilities already there.

Though student athletes on these teams say they would not relish the longer walks to and from practice, many say they understand why the move would be necessary.

“The MAC is a great home court to play on, but the fact that floor time must be set aside for varsity teams, intramurals and recreational activities creates a scheduling nightmare for [Associate Director of Athletics] John Wentzell and many unhappy patrons,” says outgoing Men’s Volleyball Tri-Captain Mike Bookman ’03. “I hope for the sake of both varsity athletes and recreational patrons of the MAC that the athletes can be moved across the river.”

The MAC can be seen as an example of how even those facilities that are devoted to student activities often fail to fully meet student needs.

Just as varsity athletes are pitted against fitness junkies, a similar situation at Harvard’s premier theater space pits student thespians against professional actors.

Theater space is at a premium on campus. With only two major performance venues—two stages at the Loeb Drama Center and one at the Agassiz Theater—students are forced to scrounge for rehearsal and performance space in House common rooms, libraries, and converted pools and boiler rooms.

Undergraduate performers weren’t helped when in 1980 then-University President Derek C. Bok added another competitor for stage and rehearsal time to the mix.

Hoping that a professional resident company would provide mentorship and guidance to budding student actors and directors, Bok invited the American Repertory Theater (ART) to make the Loeb its home base.

College administrators say the ART has largely failed to live up to that role, though ART Executive Director Robert Orchard says such complaints are “disingenuous” because of the structure Harvard imposes on his company. Both sides agree that the relationship between the professional theater company and the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club (HRDC) is complicated by the arrangement.

Lewis estimates that the addition of the ART to the Loeb Drama Center has caused a net loss to undergraduates of 80-90 percent of the original building footprint.

The HRDC performs on the Mainstage for six weeks a semester. Some students—including dancers who unsucessfully mobilized a few years ago to ask for another week reserved for dance each year—say this is hardly enough. But for the ART, which pays its staff year-round, these twelve weeks mark a loss in ticket revenue and a “fundamental inefficiency” that he estimates at $1.5 million yearly, according to Orchard.