Give and Taake

Always alert to our readers' sensibilities, we have restricted this year's installment of the parietal crusade to two gentle editorials. The Student Council has muffied its annual plea as well. It appears now, ominously enough, that this orgy of restraint has had a generally soporific effect on the Administrative Board, that it has lulled the Senior Tutors and Deans into the belief that a mere shuffling of hours is enough to scotch the annual uproar once and for all. What better proof is there than the restrictive proposal which issued forth last Monday from University Hall?

Under the guise of liberalization, this new ordinance adds to the list of restricted hours the three between one and four p.m., a novelty that applies to six days in the week. This involves considerable inconvenience for the many students who wish to display their rooms to their parents, and for those who (snickers and airy smiles notwithstanding) use the present afternoon privilege for co-educational studying. Beyond quashing these activities, which, we trust, are not unduly offensive, the new limit craps the normal social routine that is so natural a part of undergraduate life, cramps it more severely than the Housemasters Committee and many other colleges have found necessary. This will be particularly disconcerting on Saturdays, when dates are usually an all-day matter. Save for football extravaganzas, Saturday afternoons are usually bare of entertainment, unless there are room privileges, a point the Administrative Board forgot.

There is but one group of students, in fact, a minority if they exist at all, who have no complaint coming. These are the undergraduates whose activity evokes what University Hall fears most--gross immorality, lurid beadlines, and the demise or desecration of the Good Name. The latest ordinance need not worry these people, for it is only the privilege itself, and not its extent, that concerns them.

What is the point of such a ruling--is there anything to justify its irritating restrictions? If the grape-vine serves us well, the objection to women in the House during afternoons is the same tired horse that has carried countless messages of rejection before, the doctrine of protection--protection, in this case, from one's roommates, House mates, and oneself. Apparently, the Administrative Board is concerned with the all-Harvard House ideal, where students who wish to study, meditate, palaver, or what have you are free from feminine interruptions. Between for and seven, the argument goes, it's time for entertainment and no one works anyway. But, during the afternoon the alarms and excursions involved in allowing girls to overrun the Houses are distinctly out of place, and must be specially forbidden. Perhaps, too, the Administrative Board fears that liberal rules might induce students "to forego the rich intellectual fare they would otherwise plan, and give themselves over to entertainment.

Dismantled down to its premise (and assuming that Houses now are overrun, a singularly doubtful point), this resembles regulating teeth-brushing and other personal trivia regulating teeth-brushing and other personal trivia which the University usually and properly ignores. Why is it the Administrative Board's business whether undergraduates can or do allocate their time properly, how well they battle temptation to slough off their studies, or whether roommates impede each other? Surely, as in any other matter of personal friction and decision, students are quite competent to make their own choices, seek then own relief.

The Administrative Board has reduced Dean Bender's oft-quoted expression, "We have confidence in the maturity and intelligence of Harvard students" to poius sentiment, then, bereft of any application save in the most narrow and unimportant circumstances.

Out of this shambles of what might have been genuine liberality, however, several happy features still appear. For one thing, the Housemasters may stretch parietal rules in whatever direction they wish, and many have already shown willingness to take advantage of this. Further, the seven to eleven extension, even it it does not apply to Fridays, is certainly worth an huzzah or two. And lastly, the Faculty's action (taken at Dean Leighton's request, who in turn was acting on a Student Council recommendation) of replacing the purloined afternoon hours on Sunday is quite pleasing too.

These benefits and concessions, neverthless, cannot obscure the pointlessness of carving three hours out of the afternoon. The least Faculty members could have done was to restore the afternoon privileges, thus fulfilling the original recommendation of the Student council. As there is no purpose in half-measures, the Faculty should repair the damage as quickly as possible.