Give and Take: II

Were students less personally involved, we suspect they would find much in the yearly parietal ruckus to amuse them. Some of the laughter, indeed, would be on themselves, but the funniest aspect would be the series of varied rags waved at them from time to time to rationalize social monasticism. Nevertheless, the subject evokes tier on tier of long faces, and when the rag is as tattered as the Administrative Board's latest, we can hardly find fault with the gloom.

In its recent decision, you remember, the Board dedicated itself to protecting students from clangorous female intrusions on their solitude. Not only is this on a level with protecting them from the evils of retiring too late at night, but, we've discovered, it does not even have any basis in fact. A sampling we took, an approximate count of the female invasion on weekdays during the deleted hours one and four, is particularly revealing. During the past week or so, the average number of girls infesting Eliot, Lowell, and Kirkland per weekday was four, three, and three respectively. Even when considering fluctuations, such as the trend upwards on Fridays, the figure seldom exceeded ten and never twenty.

Need we say more?

We must, lest the Board seek to turn these facts against us. It would be worse than fallacious to assert, as the administrators might on the strength of these low numbers, that repeal of the afternoon perquisite impedes too few people to warrant concern. That few students are harmed does not make the carving job less unnecessary and unreasonable. In fact, even if this prevented but one undergraduate from carrying on a normal social life, it would be inexcusable. Students are old enough to be trusted, not simply in academic matters, but in personal affairs as well. Whatever the excesses and whatever the friction, problems of this sort are better solved by students themselves, for there will be no benevolent, paternalistic committee to protect their solitude and personal relations in years to come.

Examining this decision, then, we find that its excuse is one of the many untenable theories that over the years have appeared, jerry-built, to justify restrictiveness. Further, the year to year doctrinal shifts (first, the grounds were morality, then fear that the draft might put freshmen in the Houses, and finally this) suggest that the stated reasons might be camoflage for more deeply-felt convictions, too fatuous to publish and too sickly to withstand prolonged scrutiny.

As we said last year, let those who refuse lenient privileges state their case fully. If they believe that women do not belong in the Houses at any time, if they believe that undergraduates are too puerile to be trusted in matters social and personal, students have a right to know why. Offering a factually empty and doctrinely specious argument is no substitute for fulfilling this right.