Our Expanding Universe

The release of the Design School's report on expansion has served to highlight one of the greatest short-comings in University operation--the absence of informed long-term planning. The very fact that this study has no official counterpart indicates the University's traditional attitude towards such efforts.

The conditions which the study discusses, however, make it clear that such an attitude has no justification. For years the University has been meeting its problems as they arose, admitting as many freshmen as it could house and teach, building more housing and hiring more faculty when it wanted more freshmen. The resulting hodgepodge has now reached a critical point, with declining local conditions, inadequate housing, inadequate faculty, and inadequate finances making a realistic and comprehensive program necessary.

To meet this deficiency, Dean Bender has been given a year to study admissions, Personnel Director John Teele has been put at the head of an office on Expansion, and a lot of top level discussion and planning has begun. Several outside groups have also entered the picture. The city of Cambridge has instituted a halting program of Urban Renewal to combat local conditions, and the Design School has begun research to assemble information relevant to planning.

All of these efforts, however, come under the heading of too little and too late. The University could have anticipated the demand for an eighth house and sought to buy up the land ten years ago. It could have anticipated the decline of local housing facilities and taken steps before the need became critical. But apparently the lack of informed planning made such foresight difficult.

It is too late to remedy past mistakes, but it is not too late to learn that precise long range planning is essential if the University is to make maximum use of its resources. Such planning requires time, money and manpower, not only one man's leave of absence, a part-time office, and uninformed speculation.

The University must therefore either make its administrators into planning experts and equip them with pertinent information, or it must call on outside assistance. The first course requires expensive additions to the administrative staff, giving Teele's office the time and facilities to do an adequate job. The second requires nothing but exploitation of existing resources.

There are planning experts and analysts in the Design School and the Social Relations Department who have expressed willingness to sponsor projects and give advice--if they are asked. Thus far, they have not even been encouraged. The Design School study this fall often found that necessary information was either non-existent, not available to the public, or too expensive to gather. Such an attitude towards research is not likely to bring more and better planning.

But if the administration is reluctant to seek outside aid, or is dubious of its value, it will have to take the responsibility upon itself, setting out to master problems which have occupied professors for years. In either case, the University can no longer allow "organic growth." The Yard may be a charming anachronism, but there is very little charm in raising a family in a $20 a week cold water flat or crowding four students into a room built for two.