GSAS Student Council Criticizes Harvard Housing Affordability

BOSTON — Members of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Student Council criticized the Harvard administration for high off-campus housing prices at a meeting Thursday night.

At the meeting, held on the Harvard Medical School campus in Boston, the GSC also unanimously passed a motion to abolish elections for committee membership, instead alolwing membership to be open-ended. The passage of the motion follows months of continued requests from the GSC for students to join its events and social media committees.

During the meeting, Max Lu, GSC chair of advocacy, announced that housing would be the advocacy topic of the month. An open floor followed, during which several representatives criticized Harvard’s housing options and affordability.

“Harvard has all of this off-campus housing. It's very expensive. I mean, they say it’s the market rate, but Harvard is the biggest landlord in Cambridge. It sets it that way,” said Max Street, a Ph.D. student in the Germanic Languages and Literatures department.

Students also criticized Harvard for not providing assistance to graduate students regarding researching different available housing options and offering housing through a randomized lottery system that does not prioritize students of higher financial need.

“The system is not very intuitive,” Lu said.

Harvard spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

GSC President Laura König also announced the recent election of two new at-large representatives — Narges Ada Shafegati and Shubham Choudary — and a division representative for the social sciences, Julia Kempton.

König then honored Jack Bishop, a fifth-year Ph.D. student in anthropology, as the November student of the month for his research on domesticated plants and animals in Morocco.

The body also announced that thirty-one students applied to teach mini-courses through the January@HarvardGSAS program, which runs during J-Term each year.

König encouraged students to attend courses even if they weren’t teaching them to engage the student body.

“They are completely free, and they're just kind of a way to still keep the community close during January,” said König.

—Staff writer Angelina J. Parker can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @angelinajparker.