Alumni, Come Nigh

Except for Commencements, periodic class reunions, and Yale games, a Harvard alumnus has little chance to come into much contact with his University. If he should ever care to come back and look up old friends and classmates, visit sons or brothers, or just drop in on old surroundings, any kind of common meeting place in Cambridge is nonexistent if he lacks Club affiliations. Were he a Yaleman, he could get together in an old colonial mansion serving as a "Yale Graduates' Club," but here, unfortunately, the old grad is left more or less to his own ingenuity and that of local hostelries.

Joseph K. Hamlen '04, president and publisher of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin, recently hit upon what he considered a worthwhile solution of the dilemma, and, in an open letter to his readers and to the presidents of the four major Alumni organizations, he delineated what seems an admirable proposal. When the Bulletin staff moved into their new quarters on Dunster Street across from the Indoor Athletic Building a couple of months ago, they discovered above their heads two floors of fugitives from the housing shortage holed up in what fortunately are only temporary apartments. When these occupants move out in a few years 54 Dunster Street will have empty space galore, and herein seems the answer to the Alumni's worries. Office room for all Alumni activities will then be at hand in a building all their own, together with third-floor accommodations for visiting officials and delegates. And on the first floor there still remains plenty of room for a good-sized Alumni lounge and meeting place.

The only difficulty seems to be in persuading the various organizations eventually to move to the new quarters, and thus consolidate all the dispersed Alumni functions under one roof. As a consequence, crowded Wadsworth House could be left to help satisfy the expanding space demands of the other University offices which now use part of its facilities. Some dichards may plead for the old "serenity" of historic Wadsworth, or insist that the Harvard Club of Boston is an adequate gathering point, but these hardly seem valid objections to a desirable and long-needed plan that should be successfully brought to fruition several years hence.