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"The University of Toronto seems to have a modified House Plan, similar in many ways to that Harvard has adopted," said H.W. Garrod. Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at the University this year, who recently returned from Canada, where he delivered the Alexander Lectures in Toronto.
"In Toronto University Hart Hall is a single large building, a sort of Union, in which most of the undergraduate activities are centered. There are squash courts, a swimming pool, dining room, meeting places for student organizations, a hall for debating, a considerable library, everything connected with the life of the college. I was surprised to find that there is a committee in charge of the dining room even a committee supervises the servants. Each department of activity is in charge of its particular undergraduate committee."
Professor Garrod was particularly interested in the dining room, where he found a high table. "Here," he said, "not only the warden or head of the Hall, sits, but also the student heads of committees, so that the high table is composed, with the exception of the head of the Hall, entirely of undergraduates. It is a democracy of the most advanced sort."
In suggesting this solution to the much-discussed problem of the high table, Professor Garrod emphasized that no undemocratic feeling would result from such an arrangement. The high table could be used for the students indiscriminately.
The Charles Eliot Norton lecturer, who has been heard eight times in public lectures at Harvard this year, will remain in Cambridge for another week, when he will return to Merton College, Oxford, for the final exercises of the year.
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