A Disturbing Decision

WHEN Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence endorsed a controversial plan to build a hotel on the former site of the Gulf Station in Harvard Square, he signaled victory for Harvard's bureaucratic interests at the expense of its academic mission.

Harvard Real Estate (HRE), the company which manages the University's non-academic property holdings, has pushed a plan to turn the Gulf site, one of the last tracts of undeveloped property in the vicinity of Harvard Square, into a hotel to house guests of the University. When Spence endorsed the plan--with the understanding that the site will eventually be sold to the Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS)--HRE cleared a crucial hurdle.

SINCE its inception, the plan has encountered bitter opposition from almost everyone with an interest in the fate of the Gulf site. The University has run rough-shod over the wishes of them all.

Local residents vehemently objected to the prospect of increased traffic and congestion that would accompany a development as intrusive as a hotel. Yet Spence did not even acknowledge their opposition in his endorsement, choosing to ignore the existence of community concerns.

Perhaps more disturbing was Spence's lack of consideration for the will of the Faculty. In a unanimous decision, FAS voted last December to oppose the planned hotel in favor of using the property "specifically for teaching and scholarly research."

DESPITE Spence's insistence that the hotel plan is the most efficient use of the land (revenue from the hotel will presumably pay for converting the site into office space some time early in the next century), one has to wonder why Spence so willfully opposed the wishes of the faculty he heads.

FAS has a legitimate interest in the use of the property. After all, Harvard faces incipient crises in shortages of both faculty office space and storage space for library books. To the observer untrained in the art of bureaucratic thinking, these needs seem more pressing than the shortage of moderately priced hotel rooms in the area. Spence insists that the faculty's needs will be met somehow, but he made no definite provisions for them before proceeding with the hotel plan.

Fortunately, FAS is not coming out of the deal completely empty-handed. The faculty exacted a commitment from President Derek C. Bok to be represented in future decisions affecting property development, and the Gulf site will ultimately end up in FAS's hands. Nevertheless, if we accept that Harvard's primary purpose is its academic mission, a compromise as unpalatable to the Faculty as this is still unacceptable.

BEFORE HRE can proceed with the construction of the hotel, the plan must still receive the rubber stamp of the Harvard Corporation. We believe the corporation should veto the hotel proposal, but we don't realistically expect it to rectify Spence's mistake.

Indeed, the likely conclusion to the Gulf station saga will be an unsightly edifice on Mass. Ave., a monument to Harvard's fixation on profitable niceties at the expense of academics.