College Seeks End to Long Chow Lines

Dean Ford held out hope yesterday that the long lines in House dining halls after 1 p.m.--and the even longer lines that characterized Saturday's sectioning meeting--can be avoided next year.

He said the College is giving "top priority" to easing the logjam of popular courses which meet M-W-F at 12. One solution, according to Ford, would be to impose quotas limiting the number of courses a department can schedule at a single hour. But he admitted this would not prevent conflicts between popular big name lecturers in different fields.

"Unless we go right down to the departments and say so-and-so has to move we can't really do anything. Maybe we'll have to do that," Ford said.

The dean also said that next year the College hopes to avoid the huge lines which formed at course sectioning Saturday, when hundreds of students queued up through the night and early morning seeking admission to Natural Sciences 6, Evolution, which was offered for the first time this fall.

Whether the sectioning procedure can be eliminated for some courses and in general made more orderly "is something that needs some close study," Ford stated.

He said he was particularly disturbed by the spectacle of undergraduates selling their places on a registration line, and deploring the "world series syndrome" that seems to be spreading among students "I wonder how many more will show up next year just as an investment in time," he remarked.

Registrar Sargent Kennedy '28 agreed that scheduling conflicts among large, populous courses is an urgent problem and one that "we are certainly going to try to work on." He called a departmental quota system "a definite start to ward solving the problem," but said "I'm enough of a realist to think you're still going to get logjams."

Kennedy said that the 12 o'clock slot "seems to be shaking itself out all right," and explained that "our worst problem is at 11--we have some classes bursting out of their rooms."

Instructors in Economics 1, a perennial noon giant, yesterday reported preliminary enrollment of 735 to 740, and estimated that final enrollment would approach last year's figure of 727. Richard T. Gill '48, Master of Leverett House and head of the course, said the large enrollment had not caused any dislocations, though it necessitated mobilizing some reserve section men. He characterized the pressure on meeting space as "a little greater this year" and said several sections were meeting jointly until individual rooms can be found for all.