FORGOTTEN MEN

Of all the sad victims of fate perhaps the saddest is the upperclassman who has failed to gain admittance to a house. Refused entrance at the very gates of heaven he is forced to wander alone and unwanted through eternity. Even more of a misfit than the long-forgotten commuters, his presence is hardly recognized by the university which he alleges to be his alma mater.

The college disclaims him; the houses abhor him; his friends come to suspect him; and before long he has assumed somewhat the aspect of a hunted criminal. If he walks through the common room of a house he believes that all eyes are focused upon him in derision. He begins to lose his self-confidence, and he is ready to believe that for him college life can only be a myth.

That this state of affairs should exist for students on probation is bad enough, but that it should exist for those in good standing who have committed no sins at all is doubly exasperating. There is a numerous but inarticulate body of broken-spirited, grumbling upperclassmen, who inhabit the dim confines of Hotel Cleverly and Dudley who roam the streets in search of some pitying friend who will condescend to allow them to eat a meal in the unattainable splendor of a house dining room. At one stroke they have been cut off from one or the chief practical pleasures of college life. They are living at Harvard, but to all practical intents and purposes they might just as well be living at home. Every student who is admitted to Harvard ought to be entitled to his share of college life, and he has a justified complaint if it is not granted him.

The only satisfactory remedy for the present situation would be the erection of a new house. Since this solution seems to be impossible at the moment, some temporary remedy should be applied at once. The worst feature of the mess seems to be the fact that those upperclassmen not in a house have no place of their own in which they can gather and in which the have their meals. Some such arrangements as has just been made for commuters should be made for these other forgotten men.