UNIVERSITY IN NEED OF DORMITORIES AND LABORATORY

I have been asked to write something for the CRIMSON about the needs of the University. It would take columns to cover the subject fully, for there is hardly a department of the University today that does not wish to do a larger work than its present resources permit. Anybody who reads the annual reports of the heads of the Harvard departments is struck by the number that speak of the limitations under which they are struggling on account of lack of funds. The Endowment Fund saved the University from virtual bankruptcy and enabled it to set a scale of salaries for the teaching force which is among the highest in the country and which may be considered not unsatisfactory: but as Harvard grows, so do its needs, and despite the generosity of the graduates, those needs are still legion.

Perhaps the most conspicuous need today is for a new chemical laboratory. As every undergraduate who has worked in it knows, Boylston Hall is antiquated, inconvenient, and in every respect pitifully inadequate. Chemistry is a subject of huge and growing importance. Harvard has a chemical staff of unusual distinction, but their work both in teaching and research is so hampered by the limitations of Boylston Hall that one wonders how they have been able to accomplish what they have.

Another pressing need is for more dormitories. This year the University could not come anywhere near accommodating the whole class of 1925 in the Freshman Halls; we ought to have at least one more. And more dormitories for upper classmen too, to say nothing of men in the graduate departments. Now that the Harkness Quadrangle is completed, Yale is able to house all her undergraduates in college dormitories. We wish we could say as much for Harvard. Dormitory life is so essential a part of college life that we do not like to be forced to deny its advantages to such a large proportion of the undergraduate body.

There has been much discussion of what form our memorial to the Harvard men who fell in the war should take Why not a memorial quadrangle, composed of dormitories, to be situated between Mount Auburn street and the Freshman Halls? Would not such a quadrangle be of immense practical value to Harvard, and might it not be so designed as to emphasize properly its memorial character?

Some of the graduate departments are badly crowded. The Business School in particular has been holding its classes in cellar and garret, and has had to limit its enrollment because it simply could not find space enough in which to teach all the men who were qualified to enter the School. A Business School building, or group of buildings, would not be a luxury; it is, or will soon be, a necessity.

Graduates have recently suggested the construction of a Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Building to provide adequate quarters for the college tutors. There is every probability that steps will soon be taken by the Associated Harvard Clubs to raise money for this memorial. The tutorial system is one of the most promising features of Harvard instruction today, and such a permanent headquarters as the graduates have suggested would do much to put the work of the tutors on a firm basis.

Several times each year we feel keenly the need of a larger auditorium than we now posses. Sanders Theatre-- which by the way is not architecturally the most cheerful place on earth--holds some 1300 people. The Living Room of the Union seats seven or eight hundred, and when double this number is crowded into it--as when Governor Cox visited Harvard last year-- their experience makes a New York subway jam seem tame by contrast. An auditorium with seats for three or four thousand, in which could be held Commencement exercises, the exercises on the morning of Class Day, and important lectures and mass meetings, would be a useful addition to the University.

So would a new building for indoor athletics, with a swimming pool. I do not say gymnasium, for the word gymnasium suggests a place full of parallel bars, chest-weights, and suchlike, whereas the need today is rather for facilities for a much wider variety of indoor athletics than the old-fashioned gymnasium provided.

The list of needs could be extended almost indefinitely. It would seem ungracious of the University at this time to make any general appeal for funds for these purposes, when the Harvard alumni have so recently rallied to its support and, given almost fourteen million dollars to enable it to carry on its work. But the fact remains that the service which the University can render to its members and to the community is in many respects seriously limited by inadequate equipment, and we wish the limitations might speedily be done away with