A LAST CALL

No fog now surrounds the proposed University dining hall. The authorities are behind the project; the building will go up forthwith if only the students, whose need it is supposed to meet, show themselves conscious of a need. The persistence of the University in forwarding the project attests to the sincerity with which it is being pushed from above. The offer to erect the hall was first made contingent upon prospective interest in the Union's system of club tables. When this interest failed to materialize in force, it was seen that particular reasons, among them the location of the Union itself and the isolated position of the rooms used for club tables, were as much to be blamed as actual absence of need. Next the device of circulating a petition was tried and then dropped. But the fault here, similarly, was quite obviously in the manner of circulating the petition rather than in any more significant cause. It will be remembered, among other things, that Freshmen alone were approached.

The third attempt to ascertain the will of students whom the hall would serve is less liable to abortion. It does not depend, like the club tables of the Union, upon laborious and unlikely experiment nor, like the petition, is it being given a limited circulation. Pledge cards are being sent to all members of the University except Seniors and students in the medical and business schools whose peculiar circumstances place them apart.

Upon only one count, can the present test of opinion go astray, namely, inattention. The cards are not incidental but central to the establishment of the dining hall. The pledges of sufficient men, say six or seven hundred, will bring it into being, in all probability, over the summer. Failure to receive the requisite number of pledges, on the other hand, must be taken as a student negative on the plan and will prevent all further progress until another year.

Doubtless, even with the desired pledges, the plan would not thereby become an assured success. Men might fail to redeem promises lightly made. On this account, the pledges should be signed with something like due deliberation. Moreover, the running of the hall without detrimental loss is still only a scheme on paper. The reasonable price at which it is proposed to offer viands is good fodder for skeptics who cannot be categorically contradicted. Yet, the University has studied this aspect of the problem as well as the others and is to a certain extent, plighting its faith with the student body. The proposed hall has, besides, the advantage over Memorial Hall of a better location. But all progress waits upon the student poll.