BIRTH OF A GIANT

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The statement of Master Conway that "virtually unandmous" satisfaction prevails among the inhabitants of the Leverett Towers prompts me to offer a few words on recent Harvard architecture, and on the expansion of the college. I connect these two subjects because it would seem that "Towerism" is to be a vehicle for expansion, even if the tenth House, and others which appear to be forthcoming, are not constructed precisely like the Towers.

I am an inhabitant of the Towers, though not by choice. The best thing I can say about them is that they house some hundreds of students. This they do in a functional, utilitarian manner that would be perfectly acceptable at Florida State, but that is entirely amiss at Harvard.

The Leverett Towers constitute Harvard's contribution to low-cost housing: one thousand windows, precisely the same: one thousand radiators, precisely the same (no fireplaces); one thousand cheap (and ugly) linoleum floors--and untold millions of utilitarian cinder blocks, many of them unpainted. Every morning when I wake up and touch my ceiling (I do not have to stand on tip toes to do so) I am reminded of how much like insects all of us "Towerites" are: those of us with rooms facing east are awakened by the heat and light of the sun shining through our utilitarian windows (and curtains--all the same shade of gold) at approximately the same time; those of us to the west hibernate in the afternoon because of the same windows and curtains; all of us inhabit cells which are precisely the same size, and our bathrooms are situated one under the other, layer after layer. This, I submit, is mass culture--unmitigated, a monumental exercise in poor taste.

The only possible excuse for buildings such as the Towers is a desperate needs for cheap, fast places of habitation (one can't really dignify these apiary cells with the terms "room" or "apartment"); the University administrators have been crying for years that such a need exists--that at the very least, the number of students admitted to the University must remain at a post-war high level (no one that I know of has ever seriously proposed reducing the size of the University to pre-war capacity). Mr. Harris tells us now that the college has reduced its overcrowding to only twenty-odd per cent over capacity, the time has come to expand.

The most common reason that I have encountered for wanting to expand the college and University is that the country and the world need more Harvard men. Even if one accepts as fact the need just mentioned, is it not obvious that by expansion the nature of the desired product must be changed, that the Harvard men which the country presumably craves will exist only in the past, that the product turned out on masse will not be the same? The only way in which Harvard's ideals (centering around the individual) can be preserved within education on a large scale is to have many small, independent colleges as at Oxford. As long as one is forced to rely on courses, and central facilities, expansion can only bring a Bostonian Ohio State.

Harvard's education has traditionally been one directed to a reasonably small, select group. The University has no obligation whatever to turn out more men if it must change its character to do so. On the contrary, it has an obligation to stave off America's mass culture, and to preserve its own unique contributions to the world.

Even if every practical obstacle to expansion could be overcome (very difficult indeed), one can hardly suppose that the atmosphere in Cambridge, which many students and Faculty members have found to be unique, would remain substantially the same with more bee-hives such as the Towers rising on the scene. Harvard would look more and more like a grinding, business-like machine, and what is worse, would be a grinding, business-like machine.

At Leverett House we have it now; one waits in line in the dining hall for fifteen minutes at a time, signs up for the pool table two days in advance, and dances in rooms so packed that any movement whatever requires gargantuan effort. But evidently we have only a preview of things to come. O. Kimball Armayer '61