Jones Professor of American Studies Lizabeth Cohen, a member of the FAS Physical Resources Committee, said that while she had heard nothing of plans to put undergraduates in Allston, she assumed it would allow Harvard to “recreate the Cambridge ambience of mixed housing, culture, commercial [areas] and classrooms.”

But Cohen said any near-term increase in the number of undergraduates would be counterproductive.

“I think that would be totally crazy, since we’re trying to expand the number of faculty,” she said. “We would be defeating the whole purpose of improving the faculty-student ratio.”

According to McCarthy, Summers is said to be interested in expanding the College.

Neither Summers nor University spokespeople would comment for this story.

While declining to comment directly on the new Allston plan, Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 assured that any student growth would be equaled by faculty growth.

“Obviously, we can’t seriously increase the size of the undergraduate student body without also increasing the size of the Faculty,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Much of the discussion so far has been about where we want to be 20-30 years from now.”

Summers will announce a decision this fall that could determine the fate of undergraduate housing in Allston.

—Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached at theodore@fas.harvard.edu.