Why Not in Pieces?

Some skeptics of the student center have asked why all these items necessarily need to be housed in an ambitious new multimillion dollar complex? Why can’t they be placed in separate locations wherever there is space in Allston—in the new Houses or by retrofitting existing buildings. They could be. But by putting these components together, the product is incalculably greater than the sum of its parts. Student life today at Harvard is terribly fragmented; a centrally located student center situated on the river between all the future undergraduate Houses has the potential to unite the campus.

Doing so would also amount to a much-needed statement from the University that undergraduate life is a priority. Today, many students are distrustful of an administration they see as only interested in providing education as economically efficiently as possible. They are tired of being viewed as customers in a machine—especially when Harvard’s prestigious name allows it to skimp on services relative to its counterparts. Students are supposed to call Harvard home, and the College is supposed to be central to the University’s mission. For too long, Harvard has defaulted on that responsibility for the simple reason that economics allow Harvard to get away with it.

There are some who believe that if there is student demand for a service, the market economy will provide. They argue that if the administration were to construct a student center, it might inevitably make the same mistakes it did with Loker Commons. Instead, they say, as long as Harvard brings students to Allston, the city and the market will do the rest. But as Cambridge’s puritanical licensing restrictions have shown—not to mention Harvard Square’s prohibitively expensive rent—the presence of students does not automatically guarantee the presence of social amenities. Harvard must plan for Allston in a way that encourages establishments such as groceries and late-night dining and that picks up the slack when circumstances introduce market failures, often invisible to administrators, that diminish the quality of life for Harvard students.

If none of these myriad reasons satisfy the stubborn critics in University Hall, we offer, finally, the simple argument that providing these various components in a centralized building is the most economically efficient way to ensure they get maximal use. Students are far more likely to attend student group events and utilize study and social spaces if they pass by these spaces and offices in their daily routine. Harvard students are notoriously busy; a centralized place to ground the essence of the College’s effervescent extracurricular life is imperative. Moreover, an imaginatively designed student center—that actually excites students by providing what they want and even what they don’t yet realize they want—has the potential to be the kind of place that draws students there by the nature of the building alone. Architecture can bring students together in a way that is deeply needed right now in the College’s history. Other schools have such buildings; Harvard does not.

The lessons of Loker Commons are undeniable. Just months after the Commons opened, students stopped showing up. Administrators began to scale back unprofitable features and restaurants. The cut backs produced an unfortunate, though predictable, vicious cycle, and today the University is understandably nervous about building another over-priced and underutilized basement.

Loker demonstrates that building a successful student center requires real leadership from the Harvard administration. It cannot be a watered-down compromise, and it cannot be planned according to a few administrators’ conceptions of what students want. If Harvard College thinks it can continue to coast by on its name alone—without providing the sort of top notch facilities and social life consumers of higher education have come to expect—it is surely mistaken. The College’s future is by no means certain, and the laws of demand and supply will not remain in Harvard’s favor forever.