After an initial vote to evict the Environmental Program House from one of its two locations, North House at 111 Brown Street, the Residential Council decided to allow the EPH to stay for one year, wrote Chair of the Residential Council Sam Rubinstein ’17 in an email to The Herald.
The original decision to evict the EPH centered on its inability to fill every bed in North House, said Lance Gloss ’18, housing coordinator for West House, the EPH’s other location. Currently, there is one half-empty double in North House, Gloss added.
“Our tenancy in North House was contingent on having filled all of the beds, and this is a piece of information that was lost over the generational cycle through the program,” Gloss said. “We didn’t understand the urgency of it.”
A part of the problem is that “the house has a significant share of its current in-house membership graduating or moving off campus for next year,” Rubinstein said.
Once the initial decision came out, members of the EPH were surprised but quickly developed a course of action, Gloss said. The EPH put together a comprehensive plan to fill every bed and recruit more members, he said. Without North House, the EPH would not have enough on-campus spaces to fit its members, Goss added.
When the EPH approached the ResCouncil with the plans, the council “seriously consider(ed) granting them an extension of at least a year,” Rubenstein said.
After the EPH’s appeal, ResCouncil members voted Thursday not to evict the EPH from North House, Rubinstein said. But the EPH will have to show they are capable of filling every bed within the next year, he added.
“Residential Council will review implementation (of) and compliance with this plan next year and will likely revoke EPH’s status in North House in the future if this plan is not implemented or complied with,” Gloss said.
