FRESHMEN AT PHILLIPS BROOKS

So successful was the attempt of Phillips Brooks House to form a committee to represent the freshman class in all sorts of volunteer work that last night a second committee was established to continue the excellent start. In the first year the members of the committee were distributed to the four corners of the House, some doing social service work, some helping the Red Cross and preparing Thanksgiving baskets, others aiding the speaker's committee. In addition the P.B.H. handbook was slightly revised, and this year a critical analysis of extra-curricular activities is to be made for the handbook.

Perhaps more important than these efforts is the fact that the committee is a nucleus of freshmen interested in Phillips Brooks House, an interest both solidifying the members of the group and stimulating their friends and classmates to follow their initiative in such volunteer service The committee, therefore, is a more articulate expression of the freshman class than the Union Committee. Its functions are broader; its importance greater because of its direct contact with all freshmen through canvassing and because of the value of the work it promotes.

Not only is the committee an active expression of freshmen, but also a link between Harvard and the preparatory schools. Inaugurating what he hoped would be a precedent, the president of P.B.H. last year covered the larger schools in New England, answering questions on Harvard and Phillips Brooks House. Thus many men entering Harvard this fall already had a clear idea of the significance of the freshman committee and a desire to make it.

Encouragement should be given to the furtherance of the Phillips Brooks House freshman committee as a link, other than academic, between preparatory schools and Harvard and as a more flexible organization than the Union Committee for the development of freshman student policy.