While House affiliates have resigned themselves to the current budgetary restrictions for the time being, what no one has been able to answer is when House budgets will resume the form they had before 2009.
“We hope that it doesn’t last too long, but really that’s out of our hands,” said Lowell House resident tutor Van C. Tran. “That’s really something that the dean has to think about and hopefully allocate money within the constraints of the larger University community.”
Though they may be unpleasant, Nelson said that the cuts have forced Houses to consider how they spend their money.
“Let’s all hope that everything’s going to turn around,” Nelson said. “The whole country hopes for this. All of us will have more breathing room with our budgets.”
Even if the nation’s economy and, in turn, the endowment rebound, Palfrey said he does not anticipate an immediate resurgence in funds.
Moreover, while he acknowledged that administrators understand the importance of the House system, he cited a period between 2005 and 2008 which he described as a time when they bolstered their own offices but not the Houses.
“They had a little more money, so the administration improved or increased the administrative budgets,” he said. “Truth be told, when the budget cuts occurred, they had to cut back their administrative budget, but they also cut back the House budget, which had not increased by the same degree–if at all—during the expansion.”
Where budgetary priorities will lie after the financial crisis is alleviated is also not clear. Assuming an economic recovery in 2011, any possible subsequent increase in the House budgets would coincide with the House renewal project, whose start date of 2012 was maintained as recently as February by Nelson.
But Palfrey is hopeful that the limits on his House’s budget will be loosened.
“We do meet with the President. We meet with the dean of FAS. We meet with the dean of the College, and they do seem to care. So our hope is they’ll restore it,” Palfrey said.
—Staff writer Danielle J. Kolin can be reached at dkolin@fas.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Naveen N. Srivatsa can be reached at srivatsa@fas.harvard.edu.