The Union Serves

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

I have eaten in the Union all winter and seen no signs of the failure upon which the authorities base their decision to close the place. The common rooms have been well filled. There has been no lack of men to fill the easy chairs, use the chess tables, the pool rooms, the magazine racks, or the library. The dining rooms have always seemed well patronized. One must usually wait one's turn at the barber shop.

The Union was, I believe, the first college union in the country. Many other universities have put up similar buildings. I have been in the Michigan Union, the Hart House at Toronto University and Willard Straight Hall at Cornell. None of them is better designed for its purpose. There is more need at Harvard for a Union than at Michigan, Toronto, or Cornell. Harvard is a large and cosmopolitan University; it has nothing else that does what the Union does.

The House Plan proposes to care for less than half the University. Most of the fifteen hundred men in the Law School are living and will continue to live in boarding houses. No provision is being made for students in most of the graduate and professional schools. These men are excluded from the benefits of the House Plan. The Union was erected to be their club. If the House Plan doesn't take its place why should the House Plan take it away? That would leave these men no better off than before the House Plan, but incomparably worse off. There must be hundreds of men living in apartments, rooming houses, and cell-like old dormitories who find the Union their one gathering place. Are they to eat in cafeterias, go to pool rooms for their billiards, play their bridge with the fourth man sitting on the bed? It was with such men in mind that Major Higginson donated the building. It is doubtless within the letter of his will to make the Union a freshman eating hall instead of a University club. But it would be a rank injustice, both to the memory of the donor and to those he wished to help.

Nor is the Union the only place for freshman dining halls. Memorial Hall has been suggested; but it is not the only alternative. The Union is probably as far a walk from some of the Yard dormitories as any building in the University. There are buildings in the Yard, or nearer the Square end of the Yard which could be used. What seems to recommend the Union to the Overseers is the cheapness with which it can be converted. I suggest that the University could better afford to build a new set of freshman dining halls than to sacrifice a most valuable possession. Name withheld by request