Inter-House Eating

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To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

As I have no longer any connection with the administration of the House Plan, and have no idea of the official attitude on the matter of inter-house eating, I may perhaps raise one point in connection with your editorial on that subject. You are, it seems to me, correct in asserting that the administration of any system adopted has no bearing upon the question on the whole, any arrangement which is reasonable can probably be worked. But it does appear to me that you shirk the one primary issue, an issue to which you allude casually among your list of objections and one of whose importance it is hard to convince those who criticize the present arrangement. This important point is the bearing of eating in the House upon the creation of a corporate personality in the House (to avoid the much criticized phrase "House spirit").

It is not so much the entertainment of guests which creates the problem as the use of the system to avoid eating in the House by spending the weekly quota upon guests. It is unnecessary to dilate upon this point; to imagine for instance, groups of men who would circulate from House to House as a narrow eating club, because one's imaginings are perhaps worse than the reality. Personally I think that the eating of a certain number of meals in the House is essential, though on the other hand, if the House exercises no other appeal, compulsory meals of themselves will not build up the corporate personality--rather the opposite. Possibly the present arrangement is not the best adapted to secure the eating of a reasonable number of meals in the House by its members. Undoubtedly there is much to be said against my general thesis. But it does not yet appear to me that this aspect of the matter has been adequately met and until it is so met. I am not sure that you can claim that "the demands of the House members are just" if one regards justice in the light of the eventual nature of the House Plan rather than the immediate irritation of the moment. Mason Hammond.