Deming Cites Declining Student Interest in Decision to Phase Out Dudley

Harvard College Dean David J. Deming said Wednesday that declining student interest factored into the College’s decision to phase out the Dudley Community, its more than 90-year-old community for undergraduates living outside of the House system.

“Basically, what’s happened with Dudley is that students are voting with their feet to not live in Dudley,” Deming said at an open forum.

He added that the Dudley Co-op, an alternative on-campus living space within the Dudley Community, would close at the end of this academic year, though the College does not yet have plans for how the space will be used afterward.

But he claimed the impact of the closure on students would be limited, pointing to the fact that only 16 students currently live in the Co-op, which has the capacity to house up to 32 — and that 12 of the 16 are seniors.

Members of the Dudley Community were informed of the phase-out in a July email that left the future of the Co-op — which occupies two buildings on 3 Sacramento St. — uncertain. At the time, students and resident tutors were told only that they could remain in the space through the end of the 2026-27 academic year.

The announcement was met with frustration and grief from dozens of alumni, who described the Co-op in particular as a home for political activism and independent living on campus. Some students, however, including veterans, welcomed the change and the House affiliation it would bring them.

Deming said that while the Co-op had played a historic role as a “refuge” for students of color, first-generation and low-income students, and LGBTQ+ students, that role had grown less necessary as the House system became “much more welcoming” to those students in recent years.

“This is not a diminishment of Dudley at all,” he said. “Just a recognition that things are actually in a much better place in terms of support for students of all kinds here at Harvard than they were when Dudley was created.”

He committed the College to continuing to support those students through the Houses.

“We’re very committed to supporting all the students who are in Dudley now and the kinds of students who would have been in Dudley in years past,” Deming said. “We’re just supporting them through the architecture of the House system.”

Founded in 1935 to serve undergraduates living outside the traditional residential system, Dudley has been described by students and alumni as a home for those who felt otherwise alienated from the broader Harvard community.

Deming said Wednesday that the College intended to “honor” Dudley’s history, but declined to detail specific plans to do so.

The decision to phase out Dudley — and lay off two of its three administrators — came as part of a broader effort to close a $365 million hole in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ budget through sweeping workforce cuts and an overhaul of its administrative structure.

Deming said leaving room to “build back” had been a priority in deciding where to cut, and that he had hoped to avoid trimming small programs the College would be unable to revive later.

But he acknowledged that a multimillion-dollar deficit had required paring back some student-facing programming.

“The College is mostly student-facing programmatic work,” Deming said. “I didn’t want any of that to go away, and some of it did, but most of it didn’t.”

—Staff writer Sebastian B. Connolly can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at sbc.23. Follow him on X @SebastianC4784.

—Staff writer Summer E. Rose can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at ser.85. Follow her on X @summerellenrose.