Harvard’s oldest building—freshman dorm no more

It was 1939 when the President’s Office moved in, more than two centuries after Massachusetts Hall was built as a student dorm. It was last summer when the Faculty of Arts and Sciences “sold” the 286-year-old building to the central administration, ending an arrangement in which the center rented office space on the first, second, and third floors.

This summer, Mass. Hall will undergo yet another transformation—freshmen are no longer expected to live there, making room for overflow housing for upperclassmen and, perhaps, more office space. Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 says that Mass. Hall, which housed 18 freshmen this year, lacks the “critical mass” to be a full-fledged dormitory.

Not everyone approves of the change. David J. Meskill ’88, Mass. Hall’s longtime proctor, claims that its residents “are at least as happy, if not more happy, as in the other dorms” and Harry R. Lewis ’68, the oft-critical former dean of the College, put it this way last year: “I suppose different people may see different symbols in that—students losing their places to administrative bureaucrats, the College being swallowed up by the University, or maybe the FAS selling an heirloom to pay the bills.”


Library pioneer and elder statesman retires after 3 decades

Sidney Verba ’53 led a busy triple life over more than three decades at Harvard.

The renowned political scientist served as director of the University Library since 1984 and emerged as one of the University’s elder statesmen.

Verba oversaw the creation of a formidable digital infrastructure for the libraries, a book preservation program, and a massive storage facility.

He has been an active backer of projects to digitize Harvard’s collections, most prominently in a recent collaboration with Google.

His stature as a scholar of democratic participation and mass political behavior is no smaller.

Public policy professor Robert D. Putnam calls Verba “probably the leading political scientist in the world in the second half of the 20th century.”.

Verba also served as the go-to man for dealing with many hot-button Harvard topics, responding to contoversies over ROTC, the calendar, and faculty hiring, and mending fences after Lawrence H. Summers’ presidency.

“His influence on University politics, on settling disputes, and on tackling difficult issues no one else wanted to take on, could not be more profound,” government professor Gary King says.


In changing Square, pants and paninis give way to pancakes

Local-minded Square denizens watched in horror as independent businesses continued to move out and national chains moved in.

The Greenhouse Restaurant, a staple of Sunday parental visits, lost its lease after three decades and the death of its owner.

Renovations to the Harvard-owned buildings along Mass. Ave. also introduced a rash of closings, some permanent, some not.

October 13 (a Friday, as it were) was the final exposure for the Ferranti-Dege camera shop, a photo lover’s haven. Afficionados of silk-lined suits binged on the final sale at Stonestreets as it prepared to close. And Toscanini’s addicts must now travel to Inman Square for their fix of the café’s caffeine and pretention.

Campo di Fiori, which served up Italian-themed sandwiches and pizza in the Holyoke Arcade, also closed over the summer.

To compensate, another quasi-Mexican eatery, national chain Qdoba, opened to help students squelch their appetite for burritos. And late-night syrup guzzlers can head to the local IHOP.


Popular House Master and controversial dean leaves a legacy

In her four years as co-Master of Currier, Patricia O’Brien oversaw changes reflecting the House’s growing reputation as a close-knit place adored by residents despite its location in the distant Quad.

In her two years as deputy dean of the College, O’Brien led a number of student-life initiatives and was a key player in an administrative restructuring that led to some charges of a new “corporate tone” pervading University Hall.

But this year held personal tragedy and professional difficulty. O’Brien gave up her deputy dean post last summer after losing the support of Interim Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles. And she and husband Joseph L. Badaracco announced in February that they would leave Currier at the end of the academic year, five months after Badaracco’s 23-year-old daughter died in a car accident.

But despite her brief tenure, O’Brien leaves behind a sizeable legacy.

In University Hall, O’Brien helped spearhead the creation of two library cafés and a campus pub. Summers, who is said to have hand-picked O’Brien for the new post of deputy dean, said she brought “much-needed” energy to the College administration.

In Currier, where O’Brien and Badaracco frequented the dining hall and presided over the creation of a state-of-the-art TV lounge called the “Fishbowl,” the search for new masters has elicited frustration from residents. As of Tuesday, their successors had yet to be named.


After bold Early Action move, it’s time to watch and wait

In September, the College became the first among peer institutions to end its early admissions program, arguing that the system “advantaged the advantaged” and needlessly stressed high school seniors by leading them to start the application process prematurely.

Chroniclers of higher education waited with bated breath to see whether repealing Early Action here would prompt other highly selective colleges to follow suit.

Ultimately, Princeton and the University of Virginia did, while Yale, among many others, did not.

In making the change, Harvard is hoping that its reputation will prevent the College from losing top students to other institutions that still allow early applications.

“We feel that if anybody is going to step up and take the lead to try to get rid of something, which is really doing more harm than good in high schools across the country, it’s us,” says Interim President Derek C. Bok, who was a key force behind the move.

But the shift may not be permanent. William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 notes that Harvard will bring back Early Action if, after several years, the program is seen as necessary “to preserve the quality of our student body.”