A TWO-FOLD OBJECT

In establishing the Union Major Higginson had the two-fold object of providing a club to which all Harvard men should belong and of providing a centre for the intellectual and extra-curriculum life of the University. Unfortunately neither object has been attained in full; the second has hardly been attained at all.

But although it has not fulfilled the ideals of its founder, the Union has been and is a great factor in the life of the University. The mere fact that almost 2000 men find in it their only club is justification in itself. The only question open to dispute is whether those in charge have used the best means at their disposal to make the Union of greatest service in accomplishing its two-fold purpose.

There can be no doubt that every effort has been made to extend the Union as a club. But unalterable facts prevent any complete success. Under existing conditions, which are unlikely to change very rapidly, the membership is, speaking generally, limited to those who belong to no other club. There is little to be gained by trying to force the Union down an unwilling throat; it is too likely to react unfavorably on the agent.

But what of the other object? Here again existing conditions balk any complete attainment of Major Higginson's ideal; while the publications have their own buildings and the musical clubs their rooms, the Union can not hope to be the kind of centre that its founder conceived. But again there has been partial success: lectures, dinners, and committee meetings testify to that. There remains only the problem of the political and "activity" clubs which are anxious to find some centre. But in such cases, with their eyes always on the problem of increasing the club membership, those in charge have generally applied the so-called "forty per cent rule" which has curtailed the use of the Union by organizations of a political and intellectual nature. The second object has been sacrificed to the first.

Such an attitude has been defended on the assumption that membership can be increased or at least prevented from decreasing by drastic methods, denying any privileges to those who are not members. But to the outsider it appears that the Union has deliberately sacrificed one of its objects in order to give the other object some very doubtful bolstering.