JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNALJOURNAL

Harvard in Drag: The Collected Works In the bowels of the Hasty Pudding building at 12 Holyoke Street, a clubhouse with theater built in 1888, is the so-called Elephant Room, a narrow, bare- bulb, basement cell made glori- ous by its inhabitants—the cos- tumes of Harvard men in drag from years and years of Hasty Pudding Theatricals. When the run of this year’s show, Snow Place Like Home, is over, the costume of

Photograph by Jim Harrison

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and reprint information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at www.harvardmagazine.com JOHN HARVARD’S JOURNAL

Diane Comebacktolife, the tabloid jour- ciate dean of Harvard College, who notes nalist murdered by the end of Act I, and Two Charged in Theft that he has spent so much time on the those of all who had means and opportu- Seniors Suzanne M. Pomey ’02 and project that he has come to think of him- nity at the Catskill ski resort that winter, Randy J. Gomes ’02 allegedly stole about self as dean for Hasty Pudding. will join their outrageous predecessors in $90,000 from the Hasty Pudding The- When it reopens near the start of 2005, the Elephant Room, if only briefly. atricals. They were due to be arraigned the entire building will be reserved for The Elephant Room got its name, inci- February 5 in Middlesex Superior use by student groups. The Hasty Pud- dentally, because when the wretched Court. Pomey produced the 2001 show, ding Theatricals will continue to be space was made barely usable for costume Fangs for the Memories, and was business staged in the refurbished building, al- storage sometime in the 1980s, says Daniel manager of the 2000 production, The though the student parties customarily Ring ’99 (music director of the current Jewel of Denial. Gomes helped organize associated with them may not be. In a show), masses of sand that had been put the 2001 man- and woman-of-the-year building to be used by other student or- there had to be removed. In the sand was awards. Both live in Winthrop House. ganizations as well, no storage space will found the skull of an elephant. It sits be provided for the collected costumes of today just outside the prop room. million and take about a year and a half, the men in drag. They will be banished to But the days of this décor are dwin- displacing the 2004 show to a theater the not-yet-identified precincts more distant dling. Soon, the costumes of yesteryear, Theatricals will rent in Boston. The from the Yard. And what will become of this sequined and boaed alumni associa- schedule minimizes disruption of the the elephant’s skull? tion, will have to go elsewhere, along with shows. Had renovations begun this fall, This year’s Hasty Pudding woman and the posters, props, and other detritus of Pudding shows for two years would have man of the year are Sarah Jessica Parker the Hasty Pudding decades. been displaced. Harvard was not pre- (who stars in the cable-televison series The well-worn building, acquired by pared to begin renovations this spring be- Sex and the City) and Bruce Willis (Die Hard, Harvard in 2000, will close for a top-to- cause of an unexpectedly prolonged plan- Pulp Fiction, and, currently, Hart’s War). bottom overhaul just after the 2003 show. ning process. “It’s a very complicated How would Willis look in one of those Renovations will cost $15 million to $20 building,” says David P. Illingworth, asso- outfits from the Elephant Room?

After a month-long “comment period” HCECP unanimously concluded that Living Wage: that subsumed the Christmas vacation, Harvard’s “wage and contracting prac- Next Stage Summers was expected to announce his tices for lower-paid workers fall short of decision on the report’s recommendations meeting the University’s goal of being a On the last day of january, Presi- on January 18. Instead, he waited almost good employer.” To remedy this, the re- dent Lawrence H. Summers announced two more weeks to “distill what he has port proposed a two-pronged attack: that the University would adopt the “liv- heard from a wide variety of people inside first, that Harvard raise pay immediately ing wage” recommendations of the Har- and outside the University,” according to for low-paid employees by renegotiating vard Committee on Employment and Harvard spokesman Joseph Wrinn. In the wages covered in existing collective bar- Contracting Policies. (The text of the meantime, activists kept up their pressure gaining agreements—specifically, lifting president’s statement is available at on the University with rallies, including hourly wages to a minimum range of www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/- one on Martin Luther King Day that drew $10.83 to $11.30; second, that Harvard 01.31/01-katz.html). HCECP delivered its several hundred people to Harvard Square. enact a wage-and-benefits policy that en- final report in mid December; the docu- The living-wage campaigners have sures parity between the University’s in- ment (available at www.hcecp.harvard.- sought improved pay scales for lower- house pay scales and rates paid to those edu) climaxed months of intensive work paid Harvard workers like security working in comparable jobs at Harvard on the issue by the committee that former guards, custodians, dining-services em- under the aegis of outside contractors. president Neil L. Rudenstine created as ployees, and parking attendants—rates The committee rejected the demand put part of the agreement ending the lengthy that would at least match the floor of forward by the Progressive Student Labor occupation of Massachusetts Hall last $10.68 per hour adopted by the city of Movement (PSLM), the group that spear- spring (see “Airing Out the Living Wage,” Cambridge. As of September 2001, Har- headed the Massachusetts Hall occupa- January-February, page 66). The recom- vard directly employed 392 workers—all tion, that Harvard ban all outsourcing of mendations represent a substantial vic- unionized—earning less than this figure; labor. Instead, the report says that “the tory for the living-wage campaigners, even these low-paid workers represented 2.7 University must ensure that outsourcing though Harvard does not plan to enact percent of the University’s 14,506 employ- is used to increase quality and spark inno- any of their demands literally. “All of the ees. An additional 579 on-campus con- vation, not to depress the wages of Har- individual demands were rejected in their tract workers (mostly nonunion), ac- vard’s own service employees.” specificity,” says professor of economics counting for 63 percent of 919 such This statement goes to the core of the Lawrence F. Katz, HCECP’s chairman. employees, also earned under $10.68. committee’s analysis. Outsourcing has

58 March - April 2002

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For copyright and reprint information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at www.harvardmagazine.com