“I think one of the results of this is surely the desire on the part of the central administration to have consultation,” Kirby said in an interview last month before meeting with the students.

Chadbourne, who also heads the UC’s Safety Committee, says he has spoken with Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd to address the safety concerns associated with closing the path next to Leverett House during construction and having a narrower, 30-foot passageway once the building is completed.

But Dunster House resident Erinn M.M. Wattie ’06 says she thinks that students will have to push aggressively for reforms to take place.

“It’s been really hard to pin down, to identify who in the administration is responsible for making the building so close to Leverett House and so high,” Wattie says, pointing to a decentralized bureaucratic structure with which Cambridge residents have often been frustrated.

The long-awaited renovation of the Hasty Pudding building on Holyoke Street is prompting an additional housing crunch at the River. Parts of Apley Court and Claverly Hall will be closed due to noise next year. Some Lowell and Adams House residents will be relocated to DeWolfe, and Lowell sophomores will be moved to the part of Apley Court that does not face the construction.

In addition, 14 more members of the Class of 2008 than usual were placed in the Quad, and a number of Winthrop residents will be housed in a white house along Memorial Drive usually reserved for visiting faculty.

—Staff writer Natalie I. Sherman can be reached at nsherman@fas.harvard.edu.