Associate Dean and Senior Adviser to the Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin II, who led the committee that oversaw winter break, said that “the financial constraints [of opening a second dining hall] are real.”
“It will come down to cost,” he said. “The desire to put the additional funds into term-time activities is still a priority. ... It would mean a reduction in services during the academic term which all students would feel.”
McLoughlin said that the hefty portion of students staying on campus who did not eat meals in Annenberg indicates that the College can provide on-campus housing during winter break to more students next year, since the capacity of Annenberg was the limiting factor which determined the number of berths offered this year.
The next group that would likely be given housing, McLoughlin said, is students who have independently secured January jobs and internships in Cambridge or Boston.
This year, according to the report, these students were officially denied housing. However, the report notes that House staff later granted residence to many of these students, which McLoughlin said brought an undesirable level of inequity to the housing approval process.
WINTER MAY ALWAYS BE ‘SMORGASBORD’
Hammonds announced yesterday that next year’s OWAW will be stretched from eight days to ten in order to avoid reopening the Houses on a weekend day.
Aside from this change, next year’s OWAW is likely to resemble this year’s, despite the fact that 70 percent of pollees said they would participate in credit-granting courses if they were available during OWAW and that the Undergraduate Council has advocated for a two-week winter activities session with more faculty-led programs.
McLoughlin says that he wants to see students “voting with their feet” to determine how the College will focus in the long term on winter offerings.
He said it might be telling if, for example, less than 40 percent of the student body appears for OWAW again next year but attendance spikes at off-campus programs, such as the Office of Career Services’ Career Treks—which this year drew 65 students during the first weeks of break and another 65 during OWAW—and the career shadowing spots sponsored by the Harvard Alumni Association.
In that case, McLoughlin said, “We may decide to invest more in those and less on activities here on this campus.”
“I think our goal is to continue at the moment to beef up both: to continue more January experiences, to explore more funding for international travel, and thirdly to continue offering this week of on-campus activities and then see what students want to do,” McLouglin said. “It’s possible that that smorgasbord of options will be what winter break will always look like.”
—Gautam S. Kumar contributed to the reporting of this article.
—Staff writer Julie M. Zauzmer can be reached at jzauzmer@college.harvard.edu.