COMMUTERS IN THE HOUSES

The Student Council report, part of which is published in the CRIMSON today, advocates a relaxation of House policy and regulation, in regard to the commuters, on three counts. It suggests that the denizens of Phillips Brooks be permitted to eat in the Houses as paying guests of their friends and tutors, so that they may establish closer relations with those, and at the same time make new contacts among the House members. Secondly, the report favours the admission of commuters to the House libraries; and thirdly, it suggests the dissolution of the Brooks House teams, and the inclusion of their members in the House teams. All these measures, the Council believes, will help to lessen the feeling of exclusion under which the non-members of the Houses labour, and will at the same time give them the opportunity of profiting to the fullest from college associations.

The proposal that commuters be allowed to eat in the House Dining Halls is an eminently sensible one; as guests they will do no more to destroy group unity than do visitors from other Houses, or the friends invited to a club. The other two innovations put forward, however, indicate both a lack of foresight and the absence of sufficient hindsight to consider the crys of previous Councils for House autonomy and House tradition. The disadvantages of introducing non-members of the Houses into the House teams and libraries are manifold: the libraries, often overcrowded now, will lose much of their value; the temptation to take rooms outside the Houses will be increased, because the privileges of House membership will be so easily attainable by outsiders; and the sense of unity in the various Houses will be lost. In large measure, the Houses will cease to be social units and desirable dwelling places, and will become mere additions to the scholarly and athletic facilities for the use of the University.

While the commuters deserve fair treatment, and while the Administration has a definite duty towards them, it has an equal duty toward the residents of the Houses. These men have supported the House plan, and have taken rooms in the House plan, and have taken rooms in the Houses with the expectation that their chosen House was to be both permanent and a unit. While they have received recompense for this support in added privileges, they have at the same time paid for it in high room rents and various fees. They are entitled to a preservation of their aims and expectations; and the House plan itself is entitled, for obvious reasons, to the most careful protection.