College May Discard 5400 'Limit' on Fall Enrollment

The deans of the College will hold an emergency meeting with the Provost next week to consider increasing the College enrollment limit from 5400 to 5600.

Assistant Dean Robert B. Watson '37 said yesterday that Provost Buck's present ruling on the maximum number of students will have to be revised to accommodate at least an extra 180 men.

In accordance with the current size limit, no housing allowance has been made for the extra men, the total number of which Watson estimated would reach 225 by registration next month. All the men are eligible for rooms in undergraduate dormitories or Houses.

Provost Buck decided on the 5400-student enrollment as optimum after a record registration last fall heavily loaded University facilities. The administration decided at that time not to change the limit.

Returning Students

The gap between expected registrants and the last minute developments has been caused by an unforseen large number of men on leave of absence picking up their "rainchecks," Watson said.

Although about 200 Seniors will graduate at the end of the summer term, the use of their rooms had already been figured into the 5400 total.

The probable squeeze to get in under the limit was indicated early in the summer when Richard M. Gummere '07, Chairman of the Committee on Admissions, stated that two and a half applicants had to be turned down for every one accepted. Eleven hundred Freshmen were admitted as compared with 1500 last year.

Houses Tardy

Watson said that a partial explanation of the housing shortage was that the Houses had not come through as expected. He added that "since the University cannot put more than 100 men into the Indoor Athletic Building, expansion seems to be the only way to handle the overflow."

Approval of increasing the size of the College would permit efforts to strain the last possible space out of University buildings. Watson pointed to the possibility of converting the Hemenway Gymnasium into a temporary dormitory.

He said that the Yard dormitories were packed to the limit and that if adding an extra man to a room becomes necessary, it will have to be done in the Houses where the situation isn't quite so tight.

Some of the men, however, will be able to take the rooms of students who do not appear for registration.