When the economy tanked and every family lost at least 30 percent of their nest egg, it turned out that Harvard University was in the same boat as the rest of us. Their star-studded money management team wasn’t any smarter than we were. So Harvard and a few other wealthy universities with construction projects in the works announced they were going to be prudent. Along with freezing salaries and telling department heads to cut the fat, they stopped or postponed their construction projects. The plan now is to finish digging the hole in the ground for their 8.5 acre Allston Science Complex, put in the foundation, cap it off with concrete, and let it sit for an indefinite period of time.

Why does this bother me so much?

Full disclosure: several members of my family graduated from one or another of Harvard’s schools, so it’s pretty clear to me how important it is for Harvard to carry out its mission to educate young people well.

There’s no doubt that Harvard will figure out how to sustain that mission, even in a time of economic peril. It’s not the internal tinkering that bothers me.

What bothers me is that a large, wealthy university has obligations to the community in which it operates. Those obligations are based on an old biblical principle: To whom much has been given, much shall be required.

And much has been given to Harvard. Even with a 30 percent decline, its endowment is more than $25 billion. Harvard officials say they may increase their withdrawal from that pot from five percent annually to six percent to help mitigate the effects on their individual colleges. But $25 billion is still a lot of money.

Harvard has given much to its community in terms of jobs, prestige, entertainment, education, architecture and the results of its research.

But it has also taken from the community. Harvard has long had the Allston property on which its athletic fields and the business school sit. But gradually, over the last few years, the university has quietly bought up Allston land until they now own 362 acres in that community, according to the BRA. Much of that land formerly produced tax revenue for the city of Boston, of which Allston is a part, and in the future won’t because of Harvard’s non-profit status.

One must question what is the right definition of prudence in this new economy. All of us who thought we were being prudent by saving and investing have learned that, over the past decade, putting the money under the mattress might have been the wiser course.

So Harvard might be better off taking the money for the Allston Science Complex out of its endowment and investing it in bricks and mortar, where the stock market can’t touch it.

This also might well be the right time to build. Suffolk University, nowhere nearly as rich as Harvard, has no plans to delay construction on 20 Somerset on Beacon Hill, said its spokesman Greg Gatlin. Moreover, Suffolk found that the poor economy enabled them to save money in both materials and subcontractors’ fees in its renovation of the Modern Theatre on Washington Street. Partners, another wealthy institution, is also happily moving ahead, completing its new building at the corner of Fruit Street and North Grove, as well as proceeding on permitting on its new Spaulding Rehabilitation Center in Charlestown.

 When university officials were trying to convince Allston residents to support the science complex project, they stressed the urgency with which they needed it, remembers Paul Berkeley, a Harvard Allston Task Force member and Allston resident. Allston Task Force members heartily endorsed Harvard’s plans. It’s hard to see why those plans aren’t just as urgent now.

Harvard officials’ reluctance to proceed seems almost as if they are following the herd, defining prudence by slamming on the breaks, in a way no more thought out than the investment philosophy Harvard and most of us followed in the boom years. It’s as if they are following a popular style, rather like the choosing a fashionable handbag or forswearing bottled water.

A better way to look at this is that one saves for a rainy day. Isn’t that what we’re having right now? And after the rain, doesn’t the sun usually appear.

Proceeding in a timely way is the right thing for Harvard to do for the Allston community. Residents there are looking forward to the rebirth of a harsh industrial area into a lively research and education facility with people going in and out, a new park, a new streetscape and new retail shops that would serve both Harvard and the community.

It’s the right thing to do for Boston. The project would create jobs both in construction and in the expanded research facilities that were to occupy the new complex, mitigating somewhat the effect of all that land becoming tax-free.

It’s also the right thing to do for Harvard, its faculty and its students. By the time the project is finished, their endowment is likely to have recovered and they will have taken important steps toward accomplishing their mission for students and research.

University officials need to rethink what they should require of themselves to be both good citizens of Boston, as well as good stewards of their educational franchise.