Satire Proposes Selling Unhappy Dorm Inhabitants

After the style of Jonathan Swift's famous suggestion that the children of Ireland be eaten by the rich in order to relieve the poverty of that country, "A Modest Proposal" was circulated throughout the College yesterday which substituted the "outhousers of Claverly, Dudley, etc." for the Irish infants.

The two-page pamphlet, complaining of the bad fare from which the "outhousers" suffered, proposed "that the outhousers may, regulating the supply so as to keep up the price, be offered for sale to the persons of quality and fortune throughout the College; always taking care that they eat plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table."

It declared that Housemasters "since they have already deprived the outhousers of so much else "had the best right to their flesh.

The pamphleteer ruled out the expedients of building another House, curtailing the student body to fit accommodations, or "allowing the outhousers, in the meantime, the use of our dining-halls and libraries--for the first two are too wild and desperate to be considered, and the third would compromise the dignity of the House system."