Dunster

In the floating world of House images, Dunster's stock has fallen very low in the last few years. The Golden Age came at the turn of the decade, about 1960, when giants were made in Dunster House and all the most ambitious young politicos longed to live within its walls. Dunster and that other current outcast, Kirkland House, topped the House popularity polls yearly. The Dunster House Committee, at that time a body of no inconsiderable power, almost single-handedly destroyed the career of a Student Council Chairman.

Life just northeast of Weeks Bridge is quieter now; the great envelope-stuffing era is over. What political ambitious still rest in the hearts of some Dunster men are silently worked out in the daily grind of preparing for law school. Dunster has become just a place to live--and is never anyone's first choice. Everyone' decides Dunster is too far from classes, has rooms that are too small, and has nothing of the elitist or material allure of other Houses. But the people who come to live in Dunster find that most of their premonitions about it were very wrong.

Tour directors will not hesitate to remind you of Dunster's obvious assets. They are: (1) excellent food from a private kitchen; and (2) seven squash courts.

The less obvious assets cannot always be predicted, since they have a great deal to do with character of the people living in the House in any particular year. This year a renaissance has swept Dunster, tangibly improving the House's formerly, meager intellectual and cultural credentials.

The Dunster Drama Society, established this fall by inexperienced juniors with little money, produced a highly successful interpretation of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood. The same group of amateurs is now at work on Aristophanes' The Frogs. The editors of the new Dunster Political Review were equally successful; in their first issue they produced the most comprehensive discussion of Vietnam policy found in the University this year.

Amateurism abounds in Dunster House. Master Alvin Pappenheimer often gives it his financial support; a number of House members have taken advantage of the chance to experiment.

A staff of tolerant tutors from a number of fields are always there at the dinner tables. They aren't likely to try to cajole you into requesting admission to the House. Dunster residents are comfortable, and they prefer not to be crowded