Pusey Scores Overcrowding In the Houses

Overcrowding of College housing facilities was criticized by President Pusey in the annual president's message to the Board of Overseers, released yesterday. The report was Pusey's first after succeeding President Emeritus Conant.

College facilities on the whole are greatly improved since his own college days, Pusey declared. "A distinguished university faculty and unparalleled library facilities are more impressive even than I had remembered them," he said.

But housing, and increased demands for expanded admissions, have not been able to keep pace, he pointed out. Although he suggested no solutions, Pusey said "it is quite clear that a major problem, involving considerations of both enrollment and housing, is relentlessly building up before us."

Harvard's Name

"It is undeniable that there has been a vast improvement in Harvard's housing for undergraduates," he said. The Houses "are at present overcrowded," however, and "tremendous pressures to admit more students are certain soon to break over us as a result of increased population."

Pusey also expressed regrets at the failure of Harvard to give a true picture of its character to all those who hear its name. "I hope in the years ahead we can get Harvard's true story better told and more widely understood than it appears to have been in the past."

Three graduate schools drew consideration because of their financial needs. The Graduate School of Education has succeeded in raising almost $1,000,000 through the James Bryant Conant Foundation, but is still $5,000,000 short of its goal. The School, Pusey noted, has "a very exciting opportunity before it." He added, however, that "its capacity to measure up to this opportunity is seriously held back by the precariousness of its financial situation."

Divinity Boost Sought

He reviewed the fund-raising drive at the Divinity School, listing gifts now totaling more than $2,500,000, but also still short of its $6,000,000 goal. "It seems to me important that Harvard's school of religious learning be brought up to a standing and position of influence in its world comparable to that held by Harvard's other professional schools in theirs."

Similar precariousness was noted in the financial position of the School of Public Health, which last year operated on an endowment which covered only 20 percent of its budget. Yet, "more conspicuously than in the other cases, its influence and concern reach out immediately into all areas of the free world," he said.