A ROOM WITH A VIEW

Side by side with the College's scholastic emimence as a drawing card to prospective Freshmen is the Harvard House System. Four pages are devoted in the "General Information" booklet to a description of the central position held by the Houses in the life of Harvard Students. Commanding the river in red-bricked respectability, they are at once the pride and despair of University Hall. For hundreds of undergraduates are each year denied admission to them. Most of these men eventually get into Houses, but for an unfortunate minority who ever win that privilege, Harvard is not doing her duty.

When the situation became especially acute last spring a Student Council Committee urged adoption of the associate membership plan and of a definite policy that "all Juniors and Seniors in good standing be admitted to the Houses in the next assignment, unless certain insoluble complications such as difficulties in room rates are encountered." Though they accepted this report in good faith, and adopted its suggestion for associate memberships, Dean Hanford and the House Masters did not go far enough. Harvard still does not assure all its undergraduates even one year's residence in a House, while Yale, similarly overcrowded, automatically admits both Juniors and Seniors to its "colleges."

In fact from the House Masters comes already the ominous rattle of backsliding. At least one has claimed that he will not accept the same number of upperclassmen this year that he did last. Such magisterial balking is based upon the natural desire of the Masters to populate their Houses with promising Freshmen in preference to "mediocre" upperclassmen. Sophomores--claim the Masters --will contribute more to a House over a three year period than will late-comers. Nevertheless President Lowell was interested in what the mature atmosphere of congenial House life could do to improve the value of a Harvard education--for all students.

The enrollment of Harvard College will probably become stabilized at about thirty-five hundred students. An eighth House obviously must be built before all these men can spend their last three College years as President Lowell desired. Until that House is built, Harvard should follow the policy inaugurated at Yale. Every man good enough to remain in Harvard is good enough to be in a House.