END OF PARIETAL RESTRICTIONS

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

Certain aspects of the recent clamor for extended parietals have failed to receive consideration in the CRIMSON. It seems frankly and generally considered that parietal hours are designed to provide unrestricted privacy for students. In effect, this means that the university, although it may not actually encourage intercourse between students, does its share in providing the essentials, young men and quiet surroundings. The issue is not the more basic one of whether or not the university allows sexual intimacy, but rather how frequently. It is here that the more degrading implications of the whole parietal system come into question.

In allowing the university to decree when and how long parietals may be operative, the masters arrogate to themselves the right of determining an official schedule or time-table of sexual intimacy. Like Napoleon, who could tell at any given moment what was being taught in the schools of France, the masters and deans can estimate at certain designated hours the activities going on in a fair proportion of Harvard Houses. The rule of thumb by which the masters calculate the number of parietal hours belongs more appropriately in a novel by Jonathan Swift. Are they saying that below a certain number per week the morality and virtue of the student body is being safeguarded, and that above that number dissipation and reduced efficiency are likely?

Once the university had taken the basic step of allowing