MORISON, THREE YEARS AT OXFORD, OPPOSES COUNCIL PLAN FOR DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY INTO NUMEROUS SMALLER COLLEGES

The following article by Professor S. E. Morison '08 on the Student Council Committee's suggestion that Harvard be sub-divided into a number of smaller colleges appears in the current number of the Alumni Bulletin. Professor Morison returned last fall from Oxford where he had been for three and a half years as an exchange professor in history. In the article printed in part below he attacks the idea of dividing Harvard into smaller colleges on the Oxford plan, showing from his first hand knowledge of the two institutions how this step would be impractical and undesirable.

Our undergraduates, if they have less intellectual discipline than the more studious Oxford men, are more keen, alert, inquiring, and equally stimulating to their teachers.

A striking example is the recent report on education by the Student Council Committee. These young men show a surprising grasp of the fundamental problems of education, as well as the particular problems of Harvard. Undoubtedly Oxford undergraduates could, produce an equally constructive criticism of their university, but they never have and would not be listened to if they did. Undergraduates over there accept the "system" without question, although not their teachers' pet ideas.

Plan Neither Possible nor Desirable

There is one section in the Student Council report, however, with which I find myself in profound disagreement: the section on subdivision into colleges. This proposal appears to me to be based upon two fallacies: (1) that a college of the English type can be created by installing a dining room and common-room in a group of dormitories; (2) that such colleges would be desirable at Harvard if attainable.

Mr. Roberts' article of April 15 is open to the same criticism. I can sympathize with his point of view. Oxford is so vital, genial, and beautiful that few Americans with any sensibility can visit it without the feeling "Why cannot we have this in America?" That was how I felt after three weeks there, in the gorgeous summer of 1922.

In the three years that followed my admiration for Oxford, and loyalty to my college there, increased with more intimate knowledge. But the same knowledge brought conviction that the really organic, fundamental things that make Oxford what it is are the product of eight centuries of slow ripening, and can be produced in no other way. I returned to Harvard believing that it would be impossible as undesirable to transform our University into a trans-Atlantic Oxford; and this feeling has deepened ever since.

Even the smaller English colleges are cut up into cliques, or "sets," as they are called. The scholars eat at a separate table in hall, and know few of the commoners even by name; the commoners are divided into "bloods," "aesthetes," and "heartiest," or transversely into hunting men, rowing men, drinking men, and reading men. Estonians, Wykehamists, and Westministers patronize certain colleges, and stick together within each college like the products of our fashionable preparatory schools. I remember dining with a club of seven or eight undergraduates from a college with less than 100 members. none of them knew either of my other two acquaintances there, even by name.

Change Would Bring No Improvement

If small colleges at Harvard developed along such social lines, there would be no improvement over the present system. It is not likely, however, that they would so develop. Our undergraduate body, heterogeneous in comparison with most American colleges, is homogeneous in comparison with Oxford, which has students from every walk of life, every English-speaking country and state, every race, and every color. English youths, by the time they go to college, are heartily sick of public school conformity, and go in for rather extreme individualism: but over here, the desire to be "regular" outlasts school, and oven college.

Would Produce Standardization

I fear lest subdivision at Harvard, if carried far enough to break the present rhythm of student life, would produce American small-college standardization. We should have college traditions legislated into being, disciplinary measures against freaks, an intensive rah-rah spirit. I am sure the thousands of Harvard graduates feel with me that liberty to make our own friends, do what we like, eat where we liked, and wear what we liked, was the most precious aspect of our College life.

We did not begrudge their clubs to the gregarious; but we should have resented being forced into a college mould, and detested the wire-pulling that would have been necessary in freshman year, to get in the "right college" for the last three years. For let no one imagine that all the sub-divided colleges will be equal in social attraction. Almost fatally the public-school men will gravitate to some, and the prep-school men to others: certain unfortunates will be wanted no where, unless they are segregated into colleges of their own.

Not more than twelve can well engage in conversation at table. Shall we be satisfied with social groups of a dozen within the subdivided college, or will members adopt the native custom of parties in the corn belt, and progress up and down the tables between courses?