EL ENTRY

As the editors of the Alumni Bulletin state in their comments concerning the report of Phillips Brooks House on the commuting problem, the one ideal solution to the difficulty is to build additional Houses to care for the commuters, and to scale down the prices in all Houses, in order to put them within the reach of commuters. At present this proposal is of course impossible to effect.

All this has been said often. Since at present the difficulty cannot be removed, serious attention should be given to the suggestions for alleviating it. The first is to divide the commuters among the existent Houses, and give them full privileges in the dining halls, libraries, common rooms, and other facilities unique to the several Houses. Because there are seven hundred and twenty commuting undergraduates, such a division would add approximately one-third to the present burden on the capacities of each House. This plan does not appear to be feasible.

The most attractive scheme is to provide some substitute for the advantages of Houses from facilities at present available. Phillips Brooks House is now attempting to do this, and has every component necessary to a temporary commuter center except a dining hall. True, its library is woefully inadequate to the needs of students, but that might be provided for by a loan of books available from other College libraries, and by the purchase of what other books are needed. The rooms in the Phillips Brooks House which can be turned to the purpose of common rooms also need refurnishing, that they may be attractive and liveable. For a dining hall there is still Memorial Hall, never an Elysium, but perhaps more enticing than six days of the Waldorf. This solution is one suited to the several necessities of the present, and to the material at hand.