“It would appear that things they would want us to do aren’t things college students would actually do,” says Lisa M. Yu ’11, co-president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Chinese Students Association. “I think they have tamer ideas of what the student population actually is interested in.”

Moreover, according to some student leaders, these restrictions push social events out of common spaces and into dorm rooms, a move that could place students at a higher risk.

CRAMPED AND COMPLEX

If the problem of alcohol and liability is tough, many student leaders find the social space situation to be downright dismal.

Difficulties they encounter when looking for event space center around two main factors: a dearth of available but highly-demanded space makes finding meeting locations troublesome, and a panoply of varying regulations regarding access to spaces complicates the room reservation process.

The spaces—consisting of rooms in Yard buildings, the Houses, and the Student Organization Center at Hilles—each face their own limitations. The availability of classrooms in the Yard is restricted by the Harvard Extension School’s evening classes, and the River Houses each have different rules surrounding use of their common rooms, spaces which must be reserved using different systems.

Meanwhile, the locations of Quad Houses and the SOCH present a geographic deterrence. For this reason, no student group leader interviewed by The Crimson for this article said that the SOCH was a particularly useful space.

Although the Dean of Student Life did not say she counts social space among her goals, Hammonds says that social space is one of her top priorities and that she is exploring several options, including the creation of “no-work zones” for students.

Student group leaders have offered various potential solutions, including a proposal to standardize access to River House common rooms. The suggestion that emerges as the most common, though, is the establishment of a student center.

THE STUDENT CENTER

Joshua J. Nuni ’10, the president of the Student Community Center Foundation, has long wanted a student center.

A project in its infancy, the SCCF is looking for properties it can purchase and convert into an all-purpose center for undergraduates.

“We’re driven by how compelling this vision is,” Nuni says. “It’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to do something that is improbable but really cool and compelling.”

But however compelling the idea may be, the University finds itself recovering from the recent recession and facing an uncertain financial future, one that restricts its ability to engage in new capital ventures.

“We still remain in a financially constrained moment,” Hammonds says. “We cannot build a new student center right now.”