Dirt

When undergraduates returned to their houses a few day ago they had no reason to expect "welcome home" signs, but they had every reason to expect their rooms to be in a livable condition. Now livable, for the average student who passes the academic year in a rather unkempt condition, does not mean gleaming sinks, glowing floors, and shiny new paint. All that is demanded is a clean sink, a usable shower or tub, and a comparatively dust-free bedroom. This is not demanding too much. But the returning undergraduate found it all too easy to carve his initials in the layers of dust in the bedrooms while the bathrooms were at best in fair shape.

Clean rooms are the responsibility of the well financed Department of Buildings and Grounds. Their meager contribution toward getting the rooms into shape was a handful of untrained Freshman who came to Cambridge a day or so early to clean the bathrooms as best their lily white hands could. A month before this, many janitors dusted the rooms after they waxed the floors, but this was a humanitarian donation which thirty days of Cambridge obliterated. The Department of Buildings and Grounds might well invest early each September in a few mops, some dust rags, and a few cans of elbow grease manned by strong experienced arms.