PEGASUS CLAMPS AT BIT OVER BAD PROSPECT OF IMPENDING HOUSE PLAN

The following review of the current number of the Advocate was written by A. R. Sweezy '29, former president of the Crimson.

With the appearance of its February number today the Advocate joins the ranks of those who have registered unqualified opposition to the House Plan. Two articles, "On the Passing of Harvard College" by Theodore Hall, Jr. '29 and the "Academic and Philanthropic Career of Gustavus Adolphus Parker" by Philip Nichols Jr. '29 receive editorial backing in a sweeping, and on the whole lively, denunciation of the new scheme.

Mr. Hall, seconded by the Editor, makes a plea for the preservation of Harvard as it is today which he confesses to be based chiefly on sentiment. He carries the House Plan into the future, trying to look beyond the range of current prophecies, and perceiyes a Harvard cut up into autonomous units, a College no longer existant even in name, and above all a desecrated Yard. It is this last calamity that seems above all others to arouse Mr. Hall's apprehension. "The Yard, our only shrine, will be obliterated" is the constant burden of his opposition. One feels tempted to ask callously, "What of it?" Certainly no Harvard man can expect the University to preserve the physical aspect of his undergraduate days. The Yard has been desecrated several times within the last twenty years, and House Plan or no House Plan will neither look the same nor hold exactly the same place in Harvard life twenty years hence as it does today.

Mr. Nichols' protest is more convincing. In a lively and intentionally overdrawn sketch of Harvard life thirty years from now he brings into sharp relief many of the absurdities of the House Plan as it is envisaged by its present supporters. The scheme of arbitrary assignment to Houses in accordance with the idea of a cross-section composition for each calls forth the following remarks from a proselyting member of Unit C: "When your application blanks come you must on no account mention Unit C." "Why?" "Because the dean will think you want to join the units you list because you have friends there, or because you hear the tutors are good, or because you think the fellows will be congenial, or for some other low and detestable reason."

Again the astonished query of the new Freshman on being required to wait in line for a shower with his tutor is answered by exposition of the doctrine that 'One shower bath with a tutee is worth forty weeks of feet on the table and smoking a pipe.' Complaint against the quality of the meal served in one of the House dining rooms is met by the familiar, "Nonsense. Our laboratory experts have discovered that there is nothing better to eat at one o'clock on Thursdays." Finally the newcomer is told that his unit is his club and that if he doesn't like the people in it he is merely proving himself a knocker instead of a booster as it is his duty to be.

Although many of its objections are undoubtedly valid, the Advocate in its current number has done little more on the whole than register thorough disapproval of the House Plan. Such a course two months ago was perhaps the only one possible. But the time for pure opposition is by now rather late. The Plan in some form or other will be adopted; about that there can be no doubt. It is now for those concerned about the future of Harvard rather to urge that the impending reorganization of the College be made to serve some positive educational aim, than unconditionally to condemn any reorganization whatsoever.