On Past Performance

Today is the first day of the ninth month since the eleven o'clock parietal rules came to the Houses. For those who warned this liberty would cause excessive dispersion of wild oats, it was a disillusioning spring. A careful check has revealed no rise in the rates of liquor purchase, accidents, or any other social delinquency since last February. Nor have House attendants reported a greater number of loud parties or late sign-outs. In short, students have shown they merited even that small amount of confidence evinced in them by the Faculty.

The housemasters should consider these facts when they meet tomorrow night to discuss extension of the rules through the football season. When the talk gets around to nocturnal behavior of couples in the Houses, they will, for the first time, be able to base a decision o observation instead of speculation.

Eleven o'clock rules last spring meant women, parties and drinking, those "Three Horsemen" of college social life, were in the Houses at night. But this grant of freedom was abused only by those people who would abuse it at the regular parietal hours. Eleven o'clock rules this fall will mean more women, more parties, and more drinking. The masters have only to decide whether the late rules will mean so much more that the social conduct of House members will turn suddenly irresponsible.

The need for late Saturday rules on football weekends cannot be hidden behind the facade of the House dances, for they are not really alternatives. One of the purposes of the eleven o'clock rule is to give cheap entertainment to students. Many students cannot three-sixty for a dance. Many who can do so only for lack of a convenient alternative.

Mobbed House dances cannot compete with the comfort and privacy of rooms, and their attendance will undoubtedly be cut. Perhaps it will drop to the point of comfort for the many who will still attend. Revenue available to House Committees will drop, too. But these are not grievous sins; neither the dance and what it buys for the House are ends in themselves. Both exist for student's pleasure, and thus compete with innumerable other events for his favor.

No one will say that all College students are mature on social matters. But a University should be maturity's breading place, and this University has traditionally relied on social independence as one means toward this. If they want to foster this maturity, the Masters should not worry as much about how far they can trust their students, as about how they can make them more trustworthy. It is far better to extend freedom on the basis of performance than to limit it as the result of fears.

Continuation of the rule to football Saturdays would not be a carte blanche for revelry. The Masters, with a large chunk of discretion on parietal rules, can easily cancel the eleven o'clock permissions if they come in for wholesale abuse, either in spring or fall. Resident tutors and House attendants, in isolated cases, need no legal writs to enter rooms or break up parties that get out of hand. I view of last spring's performance, it seems that undergraduates can act more responsibility with social freedom than the Faculty thought. We hope the Masters will be willing to experiment a little more with this freedom, especially when students need it most.