Anxious Boarders Find Fate Hanging on Game of Chance

A strange and mystifying ceremony, will take place in Moors Hall this week as hundreds of grim-lipped girls draw lots for their next year's rooms. A highly-coveted low number will give the holder a good chance for one of the choice rooms in her rent group.

The order of the drawing goes by classes, and Work Chairmen (girls in charge of dorm work activity) get special priority. Girls who fail to draw a number at the time scheduled for their class will be assigned at the end of their group.

Virtue gets its own reward, for in accordance with a ruling of the Board of Hall Presidents, girls may lose their room priority in cases of extreme irresponsibility. Persistent infraction of dorm rules and disregard for the rights of others will also be penalized.

Schedule for the drawing is as follows (class standings as of September 1952)

Seniors March 19, 9:45 to 12:15; 2:15 to 4 p.m.

Juniors March 20, at the same hours.

Sophomores March 21, at the same hours.

Room preferences cards, with a $50 deposit, are due April 9.

Most of the vacancies in the smaller "off-campus" houses will be filled by sophomores, since juniors and seniors are assigned to them only by request, and all freshmen live in the eight quad dorms. Girls who will live in the small houses will probably list roommate preferences because most, of the rooms are doubles and triples.

Edmands and Everett will be cooperatives next year, but Peach House will be continued as a cooperative only if there is sufficient demands. Assignments to these houses are made on the basis of financial need. If a student who wants to live in one is not applying for a scholarship, she must fill out a financial statement available at the Dean's Office.

Battle For Holmes

Also involved in the drawing will be a struggle by many of the girls to get into bright, new Holmes Hall. Radcliffe's future music center. Officials expect a flood of applicants for Holmes, which will have its official opening next fall.

Just how big the demand for Holmes Hall will be is still uncertain. Music concentrators--of whom there are only ten this year at Radcliffe--will probably elect to live there and their preference should receive first consideration. Whether students enrolled in music courses will receive next consideration has not yet been decided.

Mary Small, Dean of Residence, has said that should a real problem arise on the question of admittance to Holmes Hall, there will be a meeting of the Deans and the Board of Hall Presidents. The administrators will then decide whether to give preference to music students over those with low numbers.

The main feature of Holmes will be the music library which is being moved over, en toto, from the Radcliffe Library. Record stacks will be placed in Holmes' basement, with listening rooms, booths equipped with phonographs, and eight practice rooms, five of which will contain pianos. The basement will not only have a reading room, but also a typing room and lounge combined.

WRRB In Basement

Radio Radcliffe has been alloted a studio, a glass-panelled control room, and its own private entrance in the basement of the new hall. From this location it will be able to broadcast to the living room above which will be wired for the purpose.

The spacious living room--1.333 square feet--will contain two grand pianos with a removable platform to be used for concerts. The rest of the first floor will be much like Moors Hall, elevator and all, but with only two reception rooms, instead of five.

There will be seventeen double rooms on each of the upper three floors all equipped with built in closets, bureaus, single beds--no more bunks--plus some equipment new in Radcliffe rooms. Kitchenettes with separate ironing and drying rooms, will be attached to the smokers.

According to Dean Small, there are to be no radical innovations in Holmes. As always, Radcliffe has striven to improve on the previous dormitories, but has not sought for luxury.