According to Orchard, the only way his company can provide more time on the mainstage for undergraduates is to find a secondary performance space, which he says he is actively seeking.

But Harvard has been less than helpful in this search, Orchard says.

The ART tried to purchase a large warehouse space in Watertown, but despite being a Harvard-affiliated institution, could not afford to buy the space from the University.

“Harvard Real Estate is operating the Watertown complex, and that makes it too expensive for us,” he says. “Harvard has never solved any of the ART’s space problems.”

Short-term Solutions

Although there is agreement about the fundamental need to build more physical space for students on campus, given the slow rate at which the cogs of the University planning process turn, administrators may need to find some short-term remedies.

Some say the most practical immediate relief could come from correcting inefficiencies in scheduling.

“We could use space more efficiently,” says OFA director Jack C. Megan. “The arts spaces that are actively managed...are used very efficiently and quite fully, but Harvard is very decentralized.”

For Megan, two efforts may help ease—but not solve—the space crunch: maximizing use of and centralizing information about existing spaces.

But this will require “a significant investment in framework,” including expensive staff additions and technology.

Chopra recommends the creation of a website—listing times and locations for available space—to aide student groups looking for meeting times, particularly in the evenings, when they are forced to compete with DCE classes. And he says that small changes—like shifting Loker from a hourly-based schedule system to a quarter-hourly system—would realize gains.

Though Lewis says centralizing scheduling might result in better allocation of spaces, he fears that removing masters’ autonomy over their own spaces would endanger the House system.

“The most efficient allocation of spaces in the Houses would be from someone in University Hall centrally,” he says, but “it would be totally destructive of House life.”

Even if a central scheduling system cannot be implemented, Chopra says information on how to reach House masters with power to schedule individual spaces would be helpful.

“It’s not just whether space exists,” he says. “People need to know how to get to it.”