Slow Motion

The Faculty Committee on the Houses voted last Wednesday to extend House parietal hours to midnight on Saturday evenings after home football games. The Committee thus restored to the large fraction of Harvard undergraduates who ignore football games the privileges they would ordinarily have had if another large fraction did not ignore them. Hurrah.

"You give these kids an inch, and they want a mile."

Not at all. With a patience and politeness that astounds me, Harvard undergraduate governments and the more durable CRIMSON have asked for an inch, again and again, and now have been answered with an angstrom--and that on a trial basis.

It is true, as Master Stewart said in announcing the decision, "that students are less likely to become disorderly at after-game parties than they were a couple of decades ago." It is also true that even now some students will become drunk and disorderly on any excuse and that next year's greater freedom will provide an excellent one. The Committee undoubtedly knows this and considers the likelihood to be of manageable proportions.

These truths are such a minuscule portion of the whole truth about how Harvard undergraduates have changed over the last "couple of decades"--of the whole truth about the role that parietal rules play in the lives of many of them--that I must struggle to believe these--essentially--trivia could become the center of any Faculty and Administrative discussion.

What that whole truth is I do not know, but I know it includes a higher percentage of undergraduates getting married, a higher percentage getting married immediately after a lengthy and often painful courtship during college, a higher percentage pursuing professional or graduate training or careers immediately after college preparation--in short, a higher percentage of serious students for whom college is a critical period of experimenting, of making important decisions that have not already been made for them.

It may not be genteel and proper for students to make these decisions by trying and failing and trying and sometimes succeeding, but that is the way most of us have to make them. To impose on our attempts the barriers of parietal hours designed for antiquated social institutions is barbarous. Why must the rules be a "couple of decades" behind?

The Master or the Dean does not face the predicament of wanting to offer a convenient place to study or relax to the Cliffie who is too tired to return to Radcliffe from the Square in the middle of the afternoon and who must come back to the Square for her tutorial before dinner.

The Master or the Dean does not face the predicament of the student who leaves a movie with his date Friday night and is shut out of his own room, or who returning from Boston on Saturday night in winter must rush if he wants to offer her a cup of tea--not from a filthy cafeteria--before the long, cold walk back to Radcliffe.

The Master or the Dean does not face the predicament of having lunch with a Cliffie over an idea as well as over food and wanting to pursue the idea but having no comfortable, private place to go.

The Masters and the Deans are not growing up in Harvard Houses.

Only a few students can afford to buy the amenities--alternate places to eat, alternate places to talk--that should be available to all. Inter-collegiate dining--though on a too limited, trial basis--is clearly a great first step in the right direction. Sensible parietal hours--from 1 to 8 on weekdays and 1 to midnight or 1 a.m. on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday--are clearly a second.

Let us have no "reasonable requests" for a few more hours on scattered Saturday nights. We have not got a "couple of decades" to wait.