'Cramped Quarters'

With the $82.5 million coming in, the joint issue of expansion and deconversion faces the Administration. It is widely assumed that, when new Houses are built, most students, perhaps all, will have a study-bedroom of their own. In an official booklet, the Program for Harvard College says that "the original seven Houses are badly overcrowded. Cramped quarters are not merely uncomfortable and inconvenient; they nullify the very purpose of the House system."

Three new Houses--including Quincy--stand "at the top of the list of building objectives" in the Program, and presumably this additional space will be used to relieve overcrowding. Quincy will open next Fall, the Leverett Towers a year later, followed by two more Houses in the near future. Extensive deconversion, it is thought, cannot be far behind.

But two factors--the desire to expand the College and financial pressures--may, in fact, limit deconversion to a few scattered suites. As the Programs puts it in another booklet, "The College has been growing steadily for generations. It would be a radical and untimely departure were this process now to come to a complete halt, particularly in view of the coming pressures from an increased population of college age."

Thus, while the Program talks of "cramped quarters," it also assumes that the College must grow. Harvard, faced with the pressure for expansion and the need for deconversion, is trying to steer a moderate course of "gradual growth."

One way to approach the problem is to ask: how far can the undergraduate afford to pay for deconversion? Obviously, if each student gets his own study bedroom, he will have to pay for it, and this means higher rents. Former Dean Leighton feels that, when the Houses begin deconverting this Fall, the demand for the more expensive "uncrowded" suites will be limited. "When the student no longer casts his dollar vote for deconversion," he observes, "then I am for expansion."

However, Dean Bender notes that the cost of deconversion "is small in relation to other increases we are blithly considering, such as tuition." He feels that the issues should not be decided on the basis of "a single economic factor," and adds, "I am all for extensive deconversion for sound educational reasons."

Most of the Masters, agreeing with Bender, emphasize the educational advantages of deconversion, rather than financial pressures. It is felt that Lowell and Eliot, for example, should be reduced in size to around 350 students. Under present conditions, dining halls are crowded, and the Masters are not able to know all their charges as well as they would like.

On the other hand, as colleges face the "war-baby boom," one often hears the argument that Harvard, as a leader in American higher education, has a "responsibility to expand." Some point out that, as long as Houses are relieved of overcrowding to a tolerable degree, it will be possible to add new Houses, one by one, and expand the student body in this manner.

Dean Bender replies, however, that any such increase would cause serious difficulties in Lamont, the I.A.B., classroom space, and other central facilities, even if the individual Houses are not crowded.

The problem is complex, but the current solution seems to be to make the Houses smaller, and Harvard bigger. It's a good trick.