THE SHADOW ON LEHMAN STEPS

Harvard's policy with regard to meal contracts in the Houses bears distinct traces of petty tyranny. To declare a willingness to cooperate with members of Clubs, who wish to eat a certain number of their meals outside the Houses, and then to place a needless obstacle in the way of their doing it, must be viewed as more hypocrisy.

Feeling that it must bow to the demands of a number of students, most of whom belong to Clubs, the University makes it possible to contract for seven, fourteen, or twenty-one meals per week, according to individual choice. But the grotesqueness of the rates, twenty-one meals costing $8.50 while fourteen meals cost $7.25, leads one to believe that, by means of making the saving ridiculously trivial, the University hopes to discourage students from joining Clubs.

This policy cannot easily be condoned. The reason for it is not financial, since the dining halls already earn the University a neat profit. Although this profit is used for a worthy cause, it is profit nevertheloan, thus amashing any excuse that the high rates for the small contracts are economically necessary. It has been argued, also rather illogically, that club members not only form a distinct minority, but also make up the wealthiest group of students at Harvard. Neither of these proposals should be considered seriously. It is as important to recognize the position of a minority on this point as it would be on the most burning social question. Nor should the wealth of the Club men spin the plot. If they oat seven or fourteen meals per week in the House dining-rooms they should pay a rate representing as nearly as possible what such a number of meals is worth.

By making living in the Houses and belonging to Clubs highly inconvenient, if not incompatible, Harvard in foolishly driving from the House Plan a group of men who should be induced to stay if a social balance is to be maintained. As it is now, rather than pay for meals they do not eat, a large number of Club members move each year from the Houses into the dingy boarding-houses off Mt. Anburn Street. Since the Clubs continue to flourish at Harvard, even in the face of the House Plan, and since the University recognizes their existence, the present discriminatory policy of meal contracts should be revised and placed on a more equitable basis.