STUDENT COUNCIL REPORT ADVOCATES IMPROVEMENT OF COMMITTEE FUNCTIONS

This is the third and final installment of the report by the Student Council on the House Plan. The highlights of the report for the last two days have been suggestions for narrowing the range of room rents, for a more thorough organization of House athletics, and for the continuance of the Emergency Student Employment Plan. In the report printed today, the Council deals with the House Committees and House entertainment in general.

House Committees

In most cases House committees are at present nominated by the retiring group, and by petition; and elected by the House. It is recommended that, in order to secure the men best fitted for various tasks, the committees should make a practice of appointing a number of their members. House Committees if they are active and show initiative can and should broaden and improve the organization of their activities especially as regards athletics and the choice of suitable speakers. To be sensitive to the desires of such large House groups and to overcome the inertia that necessarily exists in such groups is a field on which the House Committees as yet have not been very successful. It is urged, therefore, that the Committees should take advantage of their positions, thereby avoiding the paternalism that House masters oppose.

In conclusion we should like to back up the Masters, all of whom seemed very well satisfied with the way in which the House system is advancing. Such change as we have recommended above we feel will not alter any of the fundamental characteristics of the Houses as they now exist. Our purpose has been to suggest remedies which, if effected, will further enhance the development of this great now phase of life at Harvard.

House Entertainments

The varied House entertainments, and discussion groups, together with the most welcome variety of contact and education by "attrition" which goes on in the dining halls, have been an attractive and a valuable feature of the Plan. Such activities and groups include formal dances, generally twice annually; tea dances, costume dances, -- shipwreck dances and poverty balls; House dinners on such occasions as Christmas and President Lowell's birthday, with skits following; plays, such as "The Shoemaker's Holiday," produced by the student and tutor members of the Eliot Elizabethan Club; economic societies; "Coffee Pot" discussion groups; musical societies; singing groups; and other discussion groups. For the most part these activities, which have arisen generally from the initiative of students, sometimes from that of tutors, have been very successful. Such activities will take care of themselves. Each House acquires its own peculiar atmosphere. The following comments may be made.

First: The success of House dances depends to quite an extent on the attendance of men from other units. If two House dances are given on the same night, both may be unsuccessful. Therefore some clearing house or registry for University social functions might be helpful. Every organization before giving a dance has to secure the permission of Mr. Luce, the Regent. It seems logical that his office should keep a register of events. The Regent's office need not interfere in the choice of dates; but should keep its registry accessible to all dance committees.

Second: In some Houses, contact in the dining halls between students and tutors has been continual, pleasant, and fruitful. In other Houses the tutors and associates have preferred to eat most of the time at "staff tables"; it is safe to say that any special staff table seems a superfluous institution; and that unwillingness of the tutors to mingle with undergraduates is resented by the latter.

Third: Inter-House eating has been popular with undergraduates; it facilitates the continuance between men in different units of friendship formed in the Freshman year or before; it helps guard against whatever narrowness continued residence in one House might involve; and it enables the man of means and the man of small income to eat together in their respective Houses, each paying for his own meal, thus obviating the embarrassment which would otherwise arise from financial inability of the latter to act frequently as host.

Assistant Deans and Houses

A question has been raised by the authorities of the college concerning the possibility of making the assistant deans residents in the Houses. At present only one assistant dean lives in a House. The plan calls for seven young instructors, or perhaps graduate students, who would welcome board and lodging in a House, together with salary, for a two or three-year period. It would not be difficult, it is thought, to find men willing to fill these positions. Each House dean would have charge of a number varying from 200 to 280, as against the much larger figure with which the deans in charge of the Sophomore, Junior, and Senior classes must now cope. But House deans would be shorn of disciplinary power: cases involving disciplinary action would be handled in University Hall. Their dependence, while resident in the units, on records kept in University Hall, is a minor problem for official solution: what is of interest here is the question: would the presence of deans in the House be in any way objectionable?

This does not seem probable. The House dean would have charge of men only as regards their scholastic career: he would deal with credits, promotion, dropping courses, probation, cuts, etc. The infrequent cases of misconduct not taken care of by the senior tutor and master would as always be referred to the Dean. And it does not seem that the possible embarrassment for a student of eating with a dean who an hour before had warned him about probation requirements, or vice versa, would be a sufficient objection against the plan. There is the question whether these men would be regarded as unwelcome outposts of the Dean's office. They would, of course, meet weekly with him, and their advice would be the more valuable in cases of disciplinary action for their living in the Houses. But in cases of severe disciplinary action a student's tutor, and his House senior tutor and Master are almost always consulted anyway: the resident dean, therefore, shorn of disciplinary power, would be on a par with the resident tutor so far as his relations with House residents. This step would constitute a further decentralization, and would make more healthy contact between University Hall and the undergraduates as they live in the House plan.

Speakers in Houses

In some units the Masters have left the securing of speakers and the forming of discussion groups almost entirely to the initiative of the students. In others the masters have been very active in bringing speakers to the House. The committee feels that the efficient House committee should be active in this line: but feels that activity on the part of the Master is in no danger of being labelled "paternalism". He cannot force the members to attend: and often he can secure speakers of prominence and value more easily than the undergraduate committee men