LIBERTY, EQUALITY, AND . . .

The analysis which a committee from the California Institute has made of the relations of men living in the Houses at Harvard is unassailable as to truth, but fails altogether to explain those relations with reference to the purpose of the House Plan. The committee finds that while the House Plan tends to foster friendships among House members, it falls to break up cliques and groups, particularly within the Houses. If one is to judge from the plan which the California Institute has put into effect, the House Plan has been misinterpreted. The California system atompts to "foster the development of a house spirit, a feeling of house unity, a spirit of good fellowship, a cultural and social life--in short . . . to instill into the new residential halls the ideals which were held by members of the fraternities."

Interesting as this concept may be, it differs radically from the ideal of what the houses should be. A House is not a fraternity, and no member of it should be required to be the friend of any other member. The House offers, in addition to physical advantages, an opportunity for persons with similar interests to become acquainted, and for this reason it should contain a 'cross-section" representative of all intellectual groups. The House Plan also extends advantages which were once the sole possession of clubs and fraternities to all the members of the college. But a House is in no sense a club.

The California Institute cannot fail to lose if it attempts to make its Houses a substitute for the fraternities. House spirit may easily develop a rivalry like that of the fraternities, which disrupt the unity of many colleges by petty bickering. Blind loyalty to a group as heterogeneous as a House cannot fail to divert attention from the cultural advantages to be derived from the House Plan.