House Movers

The University's decision to allow seniors to leave the Houses next year is to be commended as an emergency measure. Given the understandable pressure from the forced commuters to move in and the "greener grass" theories of those who want to move out, the University is justified in its solution.

Presumably, however, the exodus will not be a recurrent one. The Eighth House, hopefully, will remove the outsiders' problems, by providing the space they need.

But the insiders' gripes or desires cannot be as tangibly met. Some, of course, spring from nostalgic yens for the era of gracious living and some from proctor-balked libertinism. It will be interesting to see whether, under the Administration's plans for supervision of outside living quarters, these can be fulfilled. Short of establishing Harvard on a South Pacific island, they cannot, and it will probably not take the disgruntled seniors long to be disillusioned.

The other defects of the House system admit of remedy. Better food and more privacy are costly, but not unattainable objects. Overcrowding, we are told, is being dealt with by the Eighth House.

All these measures, the urgency of which the Masters are well aware, will come to nothing if admissions expand faster than housing. An admissions policy geared to the University's capacities rather than its hopes will prevent seniors from leaving and thus weakening the University's best asset--the House system.

There will, of course, always be misfits. Some students can never accustom themselves to institutional living, and many never accommodate themselves to a House they never chose. The loss of these few individuals will not seriously weaken the system, and the University already recognizes their demands. The results of the recent poll do not seem to indicate that the ratio of malcontents has increased, but show that certain facets of the system need improvement. Once these measures are taken, there will be little demand to move.

Assuming then that the overcrowding is responsibly met, the University need not worry about mass future exodus. It must, however, continue to provide some "out" for those who can give nothing to the Houses and to whom the Houses can give nothing.