"Oh, I Don't Know ..."

And now Yale is going to install the Quad plan as the basis of her educational system. The private angel of the college, Mr. Edward S. Harkness, has finally been allowed to donate enough money to make it an actuality in New Haven, as he did a year ago at Harvard. Although it is impossible to learn all the facts in the case, it is probable that the Yale authorities saw that the plan was going to work at Harvard, and decided that it had become more than a "noble experiment".

We happened to be in Cambridge last fall at the time when the application blanks for membership in the "Houses" had just been mailed to undergraduates, and saw something of how it was going to work. The primary consideration seems to be that residence in them is by no means compulsory. Application blanks were sent to everybody, and those who wanted to enter into the new system could fill them out; others could throw them in the waste basket. It was significant that a large number of the students applied, and those to whom we talked seemed very enthusiastic about it.

The main drawbacks were mechanical, such as the question of whether the students would be compelled to eat in the House dining halls, the cost of the residence, and other such difficulties which can easily be ironed out.

At Yale, we note, the Quads will house about 250 students which seems just about an ideal size. With that number it will be easy for everyone to know all his housemates, and for congeniality to result. It is naturally impossible, and undesirable, for all to be intimate with each other. Such an idea is absurd. Smaller groups of intimate friends within the Quad will develop, which is for the best, and wholly natural.

The first few years the system may be rather ungainly, but eventually, after the first class has spent four years under the plan, each Quad will probably take on a character of its own, which will attract students of like minds and sympathies.

Freshmen, under the new plan at Yale, will not be a part of the Quad system. Their dormitories will be separate, and students will make their applications for entry into the various Quads at the end of the first year. This is an excellent feature, which will give the undergraduates a chance to orient themselves before deciding which Quad to enter.

Reflection on all this advance made by the other two members of the erstwhile "Big Three" can only be a cause for more or less regret on the part of Princetonians. It will be remembered that the President of this University, Woodrow Wilson, was the first man who seriously considered the introduction of the English system into this country. Now that the plan seems to have gained acceptance by certain powers that be, it is too bad that Princeton has not been the first to adopt the plan. --The Princetonian.