Masters Meet to Discuss Study of Housing Plan

Re-evaluation of the House system, including possible recommendations for an eighth House and other housing expansion will be the main subjects of a meeting of the House masters Wednesday night.

It is believed that the recommendations of the Masters will be presented to Dean Bundy on Dec. 8 and to President Pusey at a Dec. 14 meeting.

The study of the House system was evidently initiated at Pusey's request, because of the present overcrowded conditions of the Houses. Consequent problems in tutorial and other faculty-student relationships are included in the study.

The masters and their staffs have been considering these problems in the past two weeks. Specific questions relating to overcrowding were first formulated at Eliot House and have since been circulated in a mimeographed form to all the Houses.

Despite the announcement last weak of a proposed addition to Winthrop, and rumors of addition to the Mather section of Leverett, sympathy of the masters appears to be directed more toward a new House than to various smaller constructions.

Winthrop master Ronald M. Ferry '12 last night estimated that the proposed addition would hold 50 students, "hardly enough for an overall solution to the problem of overcrowding."

Tutorial Changes Suggested

Other masters, like Ferry, declined to comment on the Wednesday meeting, but agreed that overcrowding has resulted in curtailing the advantages of the House system.

Archibald MacLeish, acting master of Eliot, noted that it is virtually impossible to maintain active intellectual unity in a House holding 450 rather than 300 students.

The masters are also likely to discuss problems attendant to the House-system. One concerns making junior non-honors tutorial in certain fields voluntary rather than compulsory, and another suggests establishment of a broad field tutorial for science concentrators.

The re-evaluation is the first extensive study of the House system since the Report on Advising in Harvard College was issued on Nov. 22, 1950. This "Bender Report" advocated group tutorial and the House dean version of senior tutors.