Watson Sees Increase In Off-Campus Living

Overcrowding in the Houses will force more students to live off-campus in 1966-67, Dean Watson said yesterday. Finding room for this year's freshman class will bring the number of students living in apartments to about 200, as increase of 20 over this year and 46 over last year.

The squeeze of overcrowding will be felt especially by seniors, Watson noted, because they will be asked to leave the Houses. Sophomores are forbiddes to live off-campus and few juniors are granted permission to do so.

Watson explained that the College would rather try to solve the problem by giving permission for more people to live off-campus than by de-converting rooms. The experiences with overcrowding after World War II proved that it is undesirable, for academic reasons, to crowd extra people into rooms.

One reason for the lack of space is that, because of the increased draft call, there will not be the usual number of voluntary drop-outs at the end of the year. According to Watson, the Masters usually can hope to lessen the over-crowding after the first semester, but that probably will not be the case this year. Very few students will choose be take semester leaves of absence, he said.

The problem of overcrowding is already rather acute. Winthrop House, which has room for 363 students including its space in Claverly, accepted 373 students. Eliot House took in 433 men but only had room for 424.

The extra men in Winthrop House forced Master Chalmers to place an extra student in each of six suites and to convert the House guest suite into a triple.

The overcrowding in Winthrop, which was the most serious among the Houses, can be attributed to a combination of factors, Watson explained. First, the fear of the draft not only caused some students to decide against taking a year off but also made some who had already chosen to take a year off to change their minds.

Secondly, there was the unusual fact that at the end of last year there were "virtually no students from Winthrop House who dropped out because of grades, Watson said. The College usually expects 60 or 70 students from the sophomore and junior classes to drop out for academic reasons at the end of each year.