Word: barker
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...higher education is that your perspective can change a number of times. Sometimes, you see issues and situations in such a totally different light from your first position that you wonder why you ever thought otherwise before. That happened to me over the course of this year with the Barker Center, Harvard's new humanities building, where the scholars of Ralph Ellison, Emily Dickinson, Toni Morrison, William Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, Feodor Dostoevski, and Ralph Waldo Emerson now reside...
...interior was polished and belongings brought in. I helped in the moving of the English Department from the Warren House (formerly home of the graduate English program, soon to be home of the Women's Studies Program) to what is, to me, the gleaming, glowing Barker Center. I helped unpack books and move them into new (but, admittedly, smaller) offices. I reveled in the brilliant light and wide open spaces of the atrium and conference rooms. I even loved the new Xerox machines I would learn to use and took a rather too-keen interest in mahogany office furniture...
...what of the Barker Center itself? Hadn't I read all the articles about the controversy over whether to preserve the historic Freshman Union, butter patties on the ceiling and all, or to rip it down in the name of progress and the need for more office space? I had, throughout the planning stages and construction of the Barker Center, favored the preservation of the Union for preservation's sake alone, not having ever eaten in the Union but feeling rather that History is History and should be left as is. All of that feeling went out a shiny, clean...
...first-years take their meals in a beautifully reworked Annenberg Hall. And the Union has become the Barker Center for Humanities, housing 12 different University departments and centers. The Great Hall has been subdivided into a lounge, seminar room, atrium and cafe...
Harvard ought to continue renovating and revamping its other older buildings with a similar eye to that used in the Barker Center construction. The University's beautiful old campus will benefit from future updates which incorporate the spirit of the past into a productive future...