But these repairs will come at a high cost, and the College will only cover the costs of the new lighting, which it is installing in student group offices across campus. The roof repairs will cost around $3,000, although McLoughlin says he does not know the total expected cost of repairs.

Susan C. Morrison ’82, the treasurer for the Advocate’s board of trustees, says she is not worried about coming up with the money.

“This really isn’t going to be a problem at all,” she says.

Morrison says that the trustees and students leading the Advocate have “consistently...been able to keep the building maintained for years and years.”

The Advocate has already secured an anonymous donor to pay for the roof repairs and for the purchase of a new boiler, Morrison and board of trustees President James R. Atlas ’71 say.

The current boiler should have lasted 10 years, according to McLoughlin, but a lack of routine maintenance shortened its life to five. Consequently, the College is working with the Advocate to create a maintenance schedule for the new boiler.

The College and the Advocate are also crafting a plan for pest control, which is not currently a problem but is naturally a concern in a wood-frame building, McLoughlin says.

Adding to the administration’s problems with the Advocate are a series of recent parties that McLoughlin says have disturbed neighbors and inflicted damage on the building. The building has traditionally played host to parties sponsored by a variety of student groups, which bring what trustees say is needed rent money to the publication.

But parties violate the zoning ordinance on the University-owned building, McLoughlin says, and they are now prohibited—a restriction that the trustees oppose.

“I was surprised that the University should question the ability of student groups to use the Advocate building for parties, because we’ve always done that,” Begley says.

Atlas worries that restrictions on parties could hurt the organization’s financial situation.

“I don’t see what the point of that is,” Atlas says. “It provides needed revenue for us.”

He added that he thinks the magazine and Harvard “can negotiate an agreement and a compromise.”

McLoughlin says Harvard might try to rezone the space to allow parties, which would then be University-supervised and include a police detail and mandatory closing time.

“We would like to have a venue for acoustic concerts,” McLoughlin says. “Advocate members have a view that poetry, art and music are all related.”