COHPuts Off Approval for Interhouse

Starving Radcliffe girls who have been waiting for Harvard Houses to open for lunch may have to wait a long time and without the traditional bag lunches that carried them through other lean years.

Dean May said yesterday that the Committee on Houses (COH) discussed the possibility of interhouse lunches for Radcliffe at its first meeting but made no decision. The question will be taken up again at next Wednesday's meeting.

The committee felt that more time was needed to gather information on how the trial lunch program worked last Spring.

According to Dean May, the cost of the program is not a major obstacle. "Much of the problem is the question of population in each House." Some COH members, May explained, were worried that "during the first half of the year, people in the Houses are getting to know one another and this process might be disturbed if the Houses are forced to accommodate a larger number of transients."

Radcliffe is being represented on the House committee by the three Radcliffe Masters and observers from the Radcliffe Union of Students.

The lunch problem for Radcliffe is even more difficult this term because Lehman Hall is not open for interhouse lunches. Both male and female residents of Radcliffe are complaining that they often have to go without lunch because there is no place to eat in the Yard and not enough time to go back to Radcliffe between classes.

While Cliffies are waiting to get into the Houses for lunch, the College Dining Halls are inaugurating a plan to increase variety at meals by putting a coke machine in every House.

So far only Dunster, Quincy, and the Freshman Union have coke machines but the other Houses will be getting them as soon as they can be installed.

According to Frank J. Weissbecker, Assistant Director of Food Services, the decision to install coke machines was made after a trial machine was installed in the Union over the summer.

Installation in the other Houses is being delayed because some of the House dining halls do not have room for the machines. Weissbecker said that some arrangement may be tried with portable machines.

John N. DePetris, manager of the Dunster Dining Hall, said that the new coke machine has not made much difference at Dunster House. The regular beverages are still popular and only the consumption of fruit punch has shown any measurable decrease.