Divided by Seven

In the desire to integrate and adjust the Freshmen to the House system, radically altered by the accelerated program and the surrendering of the ancient Yard to the armed forces, the unity of the newcomers must not be destroyed. Now that all undergraduates will live in the Houses, there is the dangerous possibility that in an effort to enlarge their function as centers of athletic and social life, Harvard will become a body of seven small, disconnected units. Graduating unromantically in three groups annually and participating in House activities with a limited number of their own classmates, students will tend to become members of a House rather than part of a particular class embracing the whole college.

To forestall this tendency, the Student Council has suggested the creation of an Inter-House Freshman Committee, composed of one man from each House, three of whom would sit on the Council ex officio. This body will attempt to preserve the unity of the Freshman class, and will arrange such activities as weekly dinners in one of the Houses, where they can meet as a group and have an informal party or hear a guest speaker. It would substitute for the existing Yardling intramural schedule a program of Freshman House athletics, which would not only enable Freshmen to get acquainted with more men in their own class, but give them a chance to be on class teams which they would not otherwise have made.

A plan along the lines of the Student Council proposal would keep the incoming classes at Harvard from losing their identity. Such organizations as the Alumni Association and the Student Council itself will not be forced to change their whole setup, as they would if the class divisions disappeared. But more important, such a plan will help Freshmen to make more friends among men of their own age and class, and halt any further segregation of a college whose social and intellectual cohesion is already torn apart by its great number of students and their widely divergent interests.