Masters Table Request For 'Cliffe Interhouse

The Committee on Houses yesterday tabled indefinitely a request for a trial period of interhouse dining between Harvard and Radcliffe.

The Harvard Council for Undergraduate Affairs had filed the request after finding that 87 per cent of the College favored allowing Cliffies to eat free in Harvard dining halls on certain days of the week.

The Committee on Houses, which includes nine Masters and four Deans, postponed a decision on the proposal until financial questions had been restudied. The Committee was said to fear that Radcliffe could suffer a "balance-of-payments deficit" if more Cliffies ate at Harvard than Harvard men at the 'Cliffe Harvard's and Radcliffe's finances are entirely separate.

H. Reed Ellis '65, chairman of the HCUA, said last night that although he was disappointed by the committee's action he remained confident that interhouse dining would eventually be approved. He offered to cooperate fully with Arthur D. Trottenberg '43, assistant dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for resources and planning and administrative vice-president of Radcliffe.

Trottenberg, a member of the Committee on Houses, will study the proposal's financial ramifications. He will report back to the Masters during one of their informal, nine-man meetings.

The Masters reportedly approved the HCUA plan at their informal meeting Oct. 23. Yesterday, however, they agreed without a vote to table the proposal.

Members of the Committee on Houses raised two other objections to the idea of Harvard-Radcliffe interhouse besides the financial one. Speakers claimed that the plan would give cliffies a privileged position in Harvard dining halls, compared with other girls, and that it would be difficult to regulate the number of girls in a dining hall at any one time.

Although some reports have pictured John H. Finley, Jr., '25, Master of Eliot House, as the chief opponent of the interhouse scheme, Finley said last night that interhouse was not a subject in which he was particulary interested.