Rules On Women Guests Face Periodic Crises

If the cycle theory of parietal rules holds as firmly as it has done in the past, next year should witness the third major liberisation of the rules in two decades, and the fifth controversy over them in that same period. Previous changes were made in 1931 and 1941; there were discussions in those years and in 1936 and 1946. There is therefore no way to account for this year's hubbub but to assume that the parietal cycle, like everything else in the world, has speeded up.

An unprecedented diversity of method has appeared in this parietal campaign. House Committee chairman put in a request for midnight deadlines for women guests on their football weekends. A petition calling for midnight permission every Saturday night throughout the year was circulated, and attracted over 2,000 signatures. One House Committee proposed a midnight deadline for groups of three or more couples. And a Student Council committee meeting met with a delegation of Housemaster to discuss the possibility of a change.

All this will be before the Faculty Committee on Houses when it takes up the issue of women guests at its meeting next Wednesday. Whether that committee will recommend changes is doubtful. Even if its does, a revision in parietal rules would have to be passed on by the Administrative Board and sent on to the full faculty for final approval.

At the bottom level, the masters are sharply divided on the midnight deadline which has been the most frequent proposal. Those masters who support the change reputedly maintain that (1) a women in a student's room at 12 is no more immoral than a woman in a student's room at 8; (2) the "social tone" of the College is damaged more by forcing men with dates to spend their evenings in bars than by allowing them to have dates in their rooms; (3) the high cost of entertainment and Harvard's inadequate common room facilities work a definite financial hardship; and (4) later permissions on weekends could be compensated--for by reducing the hours on other days, so that the average female-hours per week would not be increased.

Masters who oppose a change are said to feel that (1) the College is a man's world and should remain so; (2) there is a desire among the undergraduates themselves to "get the strangers out" after a certain hour; (3) a student's room is, after all, a bedroom; and (4) the present threat of military service may out down the feeling of responsibility among students.

One step higher, the Administrative Board is known to favor shifting the burden of proof to those who want a change. Its basic position is that "there are certain rules in decent society which one observes automatically," and that excluding women from men's bedrooms during certain hours is one of these. The Administrative Board is not planning any revisions on its own; it will wait and see what the committee on Houses does, and then make up its mind.

Faculty Has Final Say

On the top step, the faculty is far removed from parietal rules, its one contact being the meeting each spring at which it reviews and renews the "Regulations for Students in Harvard College." It is usually willing to accept the world of the Administrative Board on matters parietal, but tends to take a generally conservative view because of the high average age of permanent appointees.

The one thing that is clear is that the Houses were built to take care of a different social situation form the one which exists today. Everyone is willing to admit that there is now a problem; nobody has yet taken the responsibility for drafting a solution.

Until the Houses were opened, in 1930 and '31, there had been virtually no change in parietal rules for 20 years. The gist of the rules was that "no young woman, unattended by an older woman, should be received in a student's room," and only with the permission of the proctor during the evening. This applied to all dormitories, and to the rooming houses where the College maintained proctors.

There was little pressure for a change. The most common lady visitors were mothers, and football weekends were not the bisexual affairs that they have since become. Cheering sections at the games were almost entirely male, and the general attitude toward women was one of tolerant disinterest. During the middle twenties, when a couple of Smith Hall (now Kirkland House) students tried to take advantage of the provision for bringing women into dining halls for meals before special social events, there was a terrible uproar.

With the opening of all the Houses, it was felt that the new "communities of students" could have a little more leeway in receiving women in their rooms. Therefore, at a meeting in November, 1931, the Housemasters made an informal decision to do away with the chaperone requirement in the Houses while preserving all the old rules in the Yard and other dormitories.

The new understanding was that students might entertain unchaperoned women in their rooms, provided they had first obtained permission of the master or senior tutor, and provided at least three persons were to be present in the room. This meant that permissions would ordinarily be granted only on weekend nights when general "open house" conditions prevailed.

For a few years after these rules were introduced, there were no difficulties. Minor differences in the application of the rules by the various Houses were noted, but these were not enough to cause trouble. However, it was during this same period that social mores were changing in a way that was to cause trouble later on.

The first big storm broke in 1936, before the last strains of the Tercentenary celebration had faded away. In February of that year, the masters had inserted a "two-woman" rule in the parietal booklet, stating not only that three people must be present when a woman was entertained, but also that two of them must be female. In addition, there was a new requirement that a hosts must sign their women guests in and out, in addition to getting the masters' permission beforehand.

But the students were not disposed to accept the new rule without a fight. Almost as soon as it appeared in the fall of 1936, the CRIMSON charged that "the University has relapsed a long way toward the bigoted puritanism which it has been trying to disown for many years."

Within two days, petitions had gone up in all the Houses, calling for a return to the old rules, and the CRIMSON returned to the attack with another editorial, urging that "the bawling brat must be thrown into the lap of (President Conant) immediately after his return from England." Mr. Conant was abroad recovering from the rigors of the tercentenary.

1266 to 49

On October 29, the Student Council passed a resolution condenming the new rule but made no specific recommendations for revisions. This was followed by CRIMSON poll a month later, in which undergraduates expressed their disapproval of the two-woman rule by, a count of 1266 to 49, and called for a return to the previous system.

A proposal to switch to the "Oxford card system" was voted down in the same poll by 692 votes to 412. This system provides simply for checking in and checking out a women guest before and after a visit, but the students polled presumably felt that it meant just one more barrier in addition to the permission required from the master.

On December 7, the Dean's Office announced that the two-woman rule had been repealed, effective the next January 4. It was abolished because "the students felt that such a rule was very inconvenient, and that it did not accomplish the purpose intended," read the official statement from University Hall. The guest book was retained in the revised plans, and so was requirement of master's permission. For the next five years, all was quiet, relatively, on the parietal front.

Then, on February 21, 1941, the Student Council approved a report, prepared by-Eugene D. Keithy '42, which called for simplification of the parietal rules and substitution of the "Oxford card rule" for the chaperone and permission requirements. The committee that drafted the report pointed out that this system was already in effect at Yale, Princeton, Amherst, and Williams, and worked well at those colleges.

In asking abolition of the advance permission and chaperone requirements, the committee claimed that they former was unnecessary since permission was always granted, and the latter was not enforced in practice and could not be enforced under any system. Both, it felt, were contrary to the "general tendency at Harvard to treat undergraduates as adults."

Five-Month Lull

There was nothing more heard about the report for almost five months. Aside from the CRIMSON editorial in support of the new system, which appeared the same day as the report and called it "in line with the reasonable theory that Harvard men are adults," there was no organized student support.

Early in June, in the only important modification of parietal rules that has taken place at Harvard since the advent of the Houses, the Housemasters approved the "Oxford card system" to go into effect for the fall of 1941. The change was to affect only the Houses; the Yard and outside dormitories were to stay as they were, and as they still are. The Oxford system is still the rule in the Houses.

There was another lapse of five years, during which a war was fought, and the College converted and deconverted. In the fall of 1946, both the Dean's Office and the council decided that something ought to be done about parietal rules.

The Dean's Office was particularly disturbed by complaints coming in from girls' colleges and from girls' parents that the parietal rules were being flagrantly violated. The council felt, however, that the fault lay mainly in the great variation between Houses which encouraged violators in the less liberal ones.

It sent a letter to the Dean, urging that "present parietal rules, properly enforced, should stand," and stating that "no modification of rules, short of complete banning of women, would prevent occasional unfortunate incidents."

Within two days the Housematters announced that they had taken steps to standardize guest privileges "as far as practicable," considering the physical condition of the Houses, and the issue died a quiet death.

OTHER COLLEGES

Other colleges have tried a wide varsity of rules and regulations to cope with the problem of student's women guests. Most of them are stricter on the subject than Harvard; few allow women in student rooms at any time.

But in most cases, the circumstances are different. Nearly every college has either fraternities or some rooms or buildings reserved exclusively for social functions. In these, weekend deadlines vary around midnight or 1 a.m., though there is usually some provision that chaperones be present and that entertainment be confined to well-populated areas.

In the Ivy League, there is a strict dichotomy between the Big Three plus Dartmouth, which allow women in rooms, and Brown, Cornell, and Columbia, which do not. Yale's and Princeton's rules are similar to Harvard's. Princeton allows women in rooms until 7, until 9 in the upperclass eating clubs (later when there is a chaperoned event), and until 9 in the underclass "Campus Center" which in conceded to be inadequate for proper entertainment. A recent proposal to extend room permission to 9 was defeated by the Undergraduate Council before ever being presented to the Administration.

Yale also has a 7 p.m. deadline, but its College-masters and Campus police are inclined to avert their eyes when minor infractions come to light. Especially on weekends, parties are allowed to run considerably beyond the closing hour.

Dartmouth has, in addition to its fraternities, a provision for entertaining women in rooms with the permission of the Dormitory Committee. This permission is ordinarily limited to the hours between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m., but an occasional mid-night deadline is set for big weekends.

There is general dissatisfaction with the situation at both Columbia and Brown, Brown's dormitories even lost their lounges two years ago because of breakage of furniture and alleged "sexual misconduct." Columbia's lounges are unpopular; though they are open mill 12, they are devoid of all amenities, and from 10:30 on there is a guard who makes periodic close inspections. Cornell seems to be happy with Williard Straight Hall lounges and its fraternities; there has been no agitation for any kind of room permission.

In startling contrast to all the other colleges in this area is M.I.T., just a few hundred yards down the river. There, women are allowed in rooms until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays and until 9 on Sundays. There are no requirements concerning chaperones or signing in. As the rules put it: "We do not attempt to describe by means of rules what behavior should prevail when girls are present as guests. The only official request is that the students conduct themselves in a manner acceptable to other guests and to the other students in the dormitory . . ."

But this attitude is the exception. Most colleges share the sentiments of Brandeis, which does not allow women in men's dormitories at any time because "men's bedrooms open off the men's common rooms."