No Mattresses for Quincy Dance

In a dining hall referendum last night, Quincy House overwhelmingly rejected a house committee decision to "decorate" its dance Yale week-end with mattresses.

Quincy men defeated the proposal by a vote of 181-96. The action followed several days of maneuvering by pro and anti-mattress forces.

The controversy began two weeks ago, when the Quincy social committee decided mattresses spread around the edge of the dance floor Yale week-end would make an "original motif."

"We didn't forsee any opposition," social committeeman James J. Gaffney '64 said. But when the House committee met Monday to ratify the social committee's dance plans, anti-mattress forces brought seventeen Quincy men to the meeting to oppose the plan.

When the House committee passed the dance plans in spite of protests, the anti-mattress faction decided to fight the decision. A petition circulated yesterday afternoon demanded a House referendum on the mattress issue.

A clandestine printing shop turned out two anti-mattress leaflets to rally support for the referendum. "The Yale Dance will look for all the world like a Red Cross Evacuation Center," sneered one of the leaflets. "The whole idea of 'decorating' the dance with 'relaxing' mattresses and bedding is so ludicrous that we have to laugh...As a matter of fact, I can't think of anything more 'decorative' than a pile of grubby, Harvard-issue mattresses."