CLUBS

In addition to its prestige as the oldest of American universities, Harvard has always been recognized as the one large institution of higher education where all individual social units minimize their own importance and influence in the interests of a larger and finer whole. One may say without any spirit of pomp or pride that membership in Harvard University is an end in itself and all the component parts of the community yield to its superiority. It has become almost a can't phrase to refer to Harvard as the exception which proves the rule: the rule being that fraternal organizations are essential to the success of any modern college or university.

There are, it is true, some fraternities which form a chain of brotherhood linking certain men in Harvard with certain other men in distant institutions. And there are clubs of various sorts. To dwell on the small part played by most clubs, meaning clubs so titled and also fraternities, as factors in gradations in the Harvard social scale is aphoristic. Every one, including both club men and non-club men, realizes that one is not a pariah because he does or does not belong to a club, or because he belongs to a club the rank of which might somehow be considered lower than another. The Report of the Harvard Student Council Committee on Undergraduate Clubs is, therefore, advisable only in one respect--and that is the light which it throws on the eating problem in the University. All other details subject themselves to this one regard. One may assume that the purpose of the Student Council in broaching this subject which is discussed openly less than any other undergraduate topic is philanthropical and not analytical merely for the sake of offering statistics and figures indicative of club enrollment.

Out of the eight points listed as being the main context of the Report, six are concerned entirely with men now in clubs. The Committee has recognized and admitted this limitation of interest but it states that the only means by which to rectify the conditions against which it protests is a public discussion, since there is no definite union of any sort between all clubs. The matter of these six points is to put it briefly, the inter-relation of members of one club to those of another, and the Committee's endeavor has been to make these inter-relations more inclusive and less rigid.

The CRIMSON is in perfect agreement with the proposals in these first six resolutions. It advocates less restrictive dogma on the part of the club open house system, and believes that the Committee has undertaken the right methods of correcting the situation which now prevails and which is unpopular with many club members who feel bound by law in such a manner that they have no privilege of inviting friends outside their club in for meals. This is, however, a matter entirely for each club--as the Committee has pointed out--and the sole merit, as far as the university as a whole is concerned, in this part of the investigation is that it places the ameliorations before the public, not for the attention of the public but as the one way to communicate with all clubs as a corporate interest. And he it said that the CRIMSON wishes to call the attention of club members to the proposals of the Committee and to recommend their adoption as an enlargement of club benefits and a removal of ritual which has become declassee.

The two remaining points of the summary of the Report are of interest to the entire university, including all men whether or not they belong to any club. As has been stated these two topics are direct efforts to improve eating facilities at Harvard, as such they demand sympathy. The points are namely.

7. That new clubs be formed with some common basis of interest with the double purpose of providing a place to eat for men not in other clubs and providing a club that should cut across other club lines."

The CRIMSON disapproves of this project for the following reasons:

1. Formation of new clubs would tend to increase the importance of clubs as Harvard institutions. Whereas now only club members are interested in and informed on clubs, the subject would, by this proposal, necessitate the great majority of men joining some sort of organization and although the eating situation might possibly be solved thus, this benefit would be outbalanced by the evils of instituting a club regime--the inevitable end, toward which this project tends.

2. "Some common basis of interest"--varieties of which the Report cites as musical, journalistic, dramatic, is an excellent manner in which to introduce men to each other, but it does not constitute the basis of a lasting friendship. Cliques are as common in, organizations devoted to music, dramatics etc, as in any gathering of men--not excepting the present clubs themselves.

3. Those men now in clubs and also members of musical, or other activities would merely be given one additional club to which they might devote a more or less constant interest. In actuality the social and eating clubs, final and otherwise, now in existence would win over any newly formed club, since friendships already formed are not easily broken.

4. It would be difficult and perhaps impossible to force men to organize such new clubs, since there would always exist a feeling that such a club was some-how inferior to those already in existence. This is an unfortunate reality which must be faced.

The last suggestion of the Committee is:

"8. That all clubs consider the possibility of enlarging toward capacity."

With this the CRIMSON is in accordance in so far as such a move would not change the present status of clubs in the life of the undergraduate; in so far as it would leave non-club members in possession of their present freedom from inhibitions regarding social desirability. Just exactly what is referred to by 'capacity' is not quite evident; but one may presume that it means facilities with which each club could comfortably feed its members.

The one excuse for the present report is its relation to the eating situation. And since the above examination has proved, to the satisfaction of the CRIMSON, that this is not the solution to that problem it feels that the report is a failure in this particular respect. As a widespread appeal to clubmembers to let down the bars it is an effective presentation. Its impracticability otherwise is unsatisfactory.