According to Harvard spokeswoman Lauren Marshall, University officials have met with House masters in recent months and distributed an information packet to students in April. HRES representatives also visited Dunster Dining Hall in April to meet with students.

“Regretfully, these discussions didn’t take place earlier in the process,” Marshall wrote in an e-mail.

DEVELOPING CONCERNS

While Georgi wrote that he recognizes a “critical need for new graduate student housing,” he added that student input might have improved the plans.

“I certainly believe that if students, tutors, and Masters of the neighboring Houses had not been kept out of the loop, the planning of the project and the final plan would have been very different,” he wrote.

Students also criticize the lack of communication between the undergraduates and the administration.

“What we are asking is that the University involve students in discussing something that will impact their lives this much,” says Dunster House resident Natalie M. Orr ’06. “We only found out about this when it was too late.”

In their meetings with administrators, students are asking the University to decrease the building’s height and width in order to preserve the open space next to Leverett House and ensure that the area is well-lit.

Students have also complained about the impacts of construction, saying that they are already being awakened by preliminary soil testing on the site.

All the rooms in Mather and Dunster that face the site on Cowperthwaite Street, as well as much of Leverett F and G towers, will be subject to “high impact noise” between September and next June, according to the packet given to students in April.

Students say the construction altered the usual preferences in housing lotteries.

“K entryway, the one that’s furthest out, usually has some of the best senior doubles. This year, nobody took a senior room,” Orr says of the Dunster housing lottery.

Marshall says the University will have a construction mitigation team on site to respond to complaints during the building process. While most construction in the city begins at 7 a.m., work on Cowperthwaite Street will begin an hour later. If work is necessary on Saturday, it will not start until 9 a.m.

The University will also create a new Harvard University Police Department station and shuttle stop on Cowperthwaite Street, according to Marshall.

This is not the only area on campus where construction will impact student life next year.