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THE RECESSION COMES TO HARVARD SQUARE
NY Times - Gone are the hot breakfasts in most dorms and the pastries at Widener Library. Varsity athletes are no longer guaranteed free sweat suits, and just this week came the jarring news that professors will go without cookies at faculty meetings. By Harvard standards, these are hard times. Not Dickensian hard times, but with the value of its endowment down by almost 30 percent, the world’s richest university is learning to live with less.
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard’s largest division, has cut about $75 million from its budget in recent months and is planning more. With the cuts extending beyond hiring and salary freezes to measures that affect what students eat, where they study and other parts of their daily routine, the euphoria of fall in Harvard Yard is dampened. . .
Harvard is not the only elite university where student life is more austere this fall: Princeton has closed some computer labs, and one of its dining halls on Saturdays. At Stanford, the annual Mausoleum Party, a Halloween gathering at the Stanford family burial site, lost $14,000 in financing and might be canceled.
But many here assumed student life at Harvard, more than at any other institution, was immune from hardship. The loss of scrambled eggs, bacon and other cooked breakfast foods in the dorms of upperclassmen on weekdays seems to have stirred the most ire.
"Students generally feel that if you come to Harvard, for what you’re paying, you should probably have the right to a hot breakfast," said Andrea Flores, a senior who is president of the Undergraduate Council. "They want to preserve the things that are at Harvard that you can’t get anywhere else.". . .
Varsity athletes have also suffered disproportionally, said Johnny Bowman, a junior who is monitoring the cuts for the Undergraduate Council, because they were the biggest devotees of hot breakfast. "It was a big shock," Mr. Bowman said. "Athletes were accustomed to coming back from early morning practice and getting their nutrients - a solid meal."
On top of that loss, some club teams find themselves sharing space at the Malkin Athletic Center because it now closes earlier on weeknights. Khoa Tran, president of Harvard Taekwondo, told The Harvard Crimson that his team would have to share practice space with the Crimson Dance Team.
"It will be an interesting mix because they will be playing dance music while we do our routines," he told the paper. "We ourselves yell every time we kick... and we kick a lot."
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard’s largest division, has cut about $75 million from its budget in recent months and is planning more. With the cuts extending beyond hiring and salary freezes to measures that affect what students eat, where they study and other parts of their daily routine, the euphoria of fall in Harvard Yard is dampened. . .
Harvard is not the only elite university where student life is more austere this fall: Princeton has closed some computer labs, and one of its dining halls on Saturdays. At Stanford, the annual Mausoleum Party, a Halloween gathering at the Stanford family burial site, lost $14,000 in financing and might be canceled.
But many here assumed student life at Harvard, more than at any other institution, was immune from hardship. The loss of scrambled eggs, bacon and other cooked breakfast foods in the dorms of upperclassmen on weekdays seems to have stirred the most ire.
"Students generally feel that if you come to Harvard, for what you’re paying, you should probably have the right to a hot breakfast," said Andrea Flores, a senior who is president of the Undergraduate Council. "They want to preserve the things that are at Harvard that you can’t get anywhere else.". . .
Varsity athletes have also suffered disproportionally, said Johnny Bowman, a junior who is monitoring the cuts for the Undergraduate Council, because they were the biggest devotees of hot breakfast. "It was a big shock," Mr. Bowman said. "Athletes were accustomed to coming back from early morning practice and getting their nutrients - a solid meal."
On top of that loss, some club teams find themselves sharing space at the Malkin Athletic Center because it now closes earlier on weeknights. Khoa Tran, president of Harvard Taekwondo, told The Harvard Crimson that his team would have to share practice space with the Crimson Dance Team.
"It will be an interesting mix because they will be playing dance music while we do our routines," he told the paper. "We ourselves yell every time we kick... and we kick a lot."
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