LEBENSRAUM

In setting forth his proposal for new and better graduate living arrangements, Dean Landis is in fact if not in name proposing an extension of the House Plan idea. For Mr. Landis stresses that the principal need of graduate housing is not merely finer buildings, but surroundings whose "atmosphere stimulates the exchange of ideas and experiences" among student residents. This Graduate House Plan suggestion is an interesting and logical one, which grows in importance when coupled with an apparently practical plan for raising the necessary money.

Dean Landis would combine in the new House or Houses students in the Law School with those of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, on the theory that each group would profit by contact with others in different fields. That is of course the primary justification of the undergraduate House Plan, and would seem to be equally applicable to the graduate scene.

Yet the Landis vision, however, desirable in the absolute, stands or falls on its practicability. Where is the money to come from? The Law School Dean does not say. Some have suggested a possible answer based on the fact that privately-owned boarding houses, where most graduate students now live, are making profits. The University, it is urged, should liquidate enough securities to pay for the erection of graduate Houses. Profits from rentals of rooms in these buildings would be placed into a sinking fund sufficient to repay the capital and interest. The net effect of the proposal is thus that, instead of holding railroad or public utility bonds, the University would be investing in housing. The Graduate House Plan would come into being without the necessity of any increase in present University endowments, or of any decrease in long-run income.

The need for improved graduate housing and eating facilities is generally agreed upon, and Dean Landis' Plan seems to offer the germ of the solution. If adoption of the proposal and the suggested method of financing it prove feasible after investigation, the graduate students will be promoted from their present orphan status to their rightful place around the University hearth.