Word: qrac
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...College Dean’s office paints a picture of a revamped QRAC, with a new dance space for the myriad of undergraduate dance troupes and replacements for the pitifully out-of-date exercise equipment, to benefit the broad interests of the Quad community. Across the street, these administrators envision a Hilles that houses a much reduced library collection, and that instead makes room for, among other things, student groups, which are currently crowded into far too few offices beneath the freshmen dorms. Quad students, on the other hand, fear that, while dancers gain crucial practice and performance space...
...QRAC and Hilles have the potential to be everything the deans envision, venues that would contribute greatly to the vitality of Quad life. Between the dance studio and the potential student group space in Hilles, we could see a marked increase in traffic flow to the Quad, and we who live here might finally be able to convince the River-dwellers that residential Cambridge boasts an attractive way of life. Many of the activities that send us trekking down to the River for the fourth time in a day might relocate closer to home, leading to a more equitable balance...
While administrators may be interested in such student concerns as the preservation of the stacks, the full range of student needs and worries will only be addressed if students are integrally involved in the process of revamping both Hilles and the QRAC. Commendably, Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 and his office have already appointed a committee to address the creation of the dance studio. This committee will deal with the technical requirements of turning a basketball court into a dance space worthy of Harvard’s diverse and stellar dance program and rightly...
Such a committee has the potential to remake the QRAC and Hilles into the best possible spaces to meet the needs of the Quad, the student body at large, and the administrative and budgetary constraints. In order to make this decision-making process a success, student members of the committee must engage the campus in critical thinking about these challenges, the faculty members must give serious thought to student input and the resulting report must be treated with the due weight by administrators in their planning...
...decisions that affect them directly; from the reorganization of the College’s structure to the efforts aimed at curtailing shopping period, the concerns about administrators ignoring students are well-founded. However, Gross’s recent willingness, indeed eagerness, to include students on a Hilles-QRAC committee has the potential to set a precedent for decision-making at the College. Thus far in his tenure, Gross has showed a marked willingness to listen to students and meaningfully include our input in decision-making, a tendency that should be applauded—and continued in his future decision-making...