Ad Board, Houses Make Parietals 'Agreement'

First-time parietal violations are now being handled by the Masters and senior tutors in each House, and punishment can be no harsher than a mild reprimand.

The Committee on Houses and the Administrative Board have decided that the Ad Board will no longer consider first-time infractions, Dean Glimp said yesterday. Glimp said he sees discipline for such infractions as being 'a chance to get to know your senior tutors."

Meanwhile, F. Skiddy Von Stade Jr. '38, dean of Freshmen, will propose to the Committee on Houses March 12 that freshman parietals be extended for the spring term. At an informal meeting Monday night, the nine Masters told Von Stade to "think some more" about his original proposal to make freshman Spring term parietals equal to those in the Houses. Von Stade said yesterday that his proposal will be to extend freshman Spring parietals "somewhere up to" that level.

Mutual Agreement

In what Glimp calls a "mutual agreement," the Committee on Houses and the Ad Board have decided that:

* All first-time parietals violations will be dealt with on the House level;

* Second, repeated, or flagrant violations will be brought to the attention of the Ad Board;

* As a general rule, the Ad Board will take action on all cases it considers. This action can be admonition, probation, suspension, or one of the various types of firing--expulsion, withdrawal, expungement, etc.

Glimp said this is not a change in policy, but "an attempt to create a uniform understanding of the situation throughout the Houses and produce equity for all students."

Since the Houses have no disciplinary power, first-time offenders will, for all practical purposes, go unpunished. "All they can do is tell them how we feel about their actions," Glimp said. "It's a chance for two guys to talk."

Glimp said that while the Houses have been instructed not to bring first-time violations to the attention of the Ad Board, they are "obligated" to bring up any repeated or flagrant offenses.

Glimp said he could not define what was meant by "flagrant" but suggested that any student who had a girl living in his room for any extended period of time, for example, was being "very flagrant."

The agreement, Glimp said, grew out of a general discussion of the inequity of parietals enforcement within the various houses conducted among the Ad Board, the Committee on Houses, and the HUC.

The discussion climaxed last November when the Ad Board voted to take no action in the case of a Leverett House student who was caught, and admitted to, leaving his room with a girl several hours after parietals had ended.

"About half the board was really upset," Cornelius Klein Jr., Allston Burr Senior Tutor in Leverett House, said. "They felt this created an ambiguous situation."

The Ad Board referred the problem to the Committee on Houses, which produced these guidelines and circulated them among the Senior Common Rooms. They have been in operation since.

"We want our position to be understood," Glimp said, "without sacrificing our flexibility." He added that the Ad Board could still take any action it wished--including no action--on any individual case, taking into account any extenuating circumstances involved.

Glimp said he doesn't believe this policy will cause increased enforcement of parietals by Masters, because of the lessened chance of getting a student into serious trouble. "The Masters aren't going to be running around with flashlights," he said, "we just think we can go easy the first time.