Quad Residents’ Concerns Are Not Trivial

To the editors:



Adam Goldenberg’s column “Nightmare on Garden St.” (Dec. 16) offers a skewed, injudicious perspective on the opinions of Quad residents and the issues of Quad life. Below are responses to the author’s more flawed points.

1. Shuttles, in addition to being convenient, ensure student safety, and the author fails to mention the number of sexual assaults that have occurred along Garden Street in recent years. There are indeed worse things to imagine than “making it more difficult for Harvard students to avoid getting some fresh air.”

2. The author states that students should deal with the trek to Lamont, yet fails to recognize students who are physically unable to visit Lamont without the assistance of a shuttle. Many of Harvard’s disabled students live in the more accessible Quad houses and cannot, as a consequence, make the 20-minute jaunt to Lamont when they need course materials that were once in Hilles Library. But the author argues that Quad residents should not ask for more on-time shuttles to assist these individuals. After all, he continues, Quad residents should stop complaining about shuttles being late because all major transportation networks suffer delays.

3. The author incorrectly attributes the request for extended dining hall hours and universal dining hall access to Quadlings, when the dominant voice in fact rises from Harvard athletes who are often unable to eat after practices.

4. In his Nov. 4 column “It’s the Funding, Stupid,” Goldenberg argues for evenly-distributed House Committee (HoCo) funds because Harvard cannot fully justify randomized housing when resources are not evenly distributed between Houses. Yet in “Nightmare on Garden St.” he contends that Quad residents’ needs should be ignored, even though they live in the Quad, as a consequence of the very same randomized housing system. Though equal HoCo funding is necessary to justify randomized housing, the author apparently believes equal student voice and equal access to academic resources are not. In fact, the administration must especially address the disparate distribution of resources between the River and the Quad because of its randomized housing system.

5. Concerns that affect one quarter of the upperclass student body should be addressed, despite the fact that the author considers them “trivial distractions.” Just because a particular population is in a minority, should its opinion be ignored? The author’s senseless statement reflects a larger-scale obliviousness to the importance of minority representation, whether that minority be economic, racial, sexual, or, in this particular situation, geographic.

Quad residents aren’t asking for special treatment in their requests for resources like reliable shuttle service and a decently-appointed library; rather, they are asking for the same resources already convenient to the rest of undergraduates.

I hope the author considers his future arguments with more prudence.



ROBERT M. KOENIG ’06-’07

December 17, 2005