FAIR AND WARMER

Relationships between Harvard and the City of Cambridge are traditionally unfriendly. This ill feeling, formerly sharpened by the ward system, will perhaps be softened next December under the new, Plan E.

Until the City Manager Plan was voted in, eleven of the fifteen city councilmen were elected by the wards they came from. This meant that the man who represented the Brattle Street ward wanted to promote the interests of that particular locality, and neither knew nor cared about the affairs of East Cambridge. The tendency has been to neglect the general welfare of the whole city and satisfy ward supporters by pulling wires on their behalf, even if it meant depriving some other section of long-needed reforms. The University community, which includes wards seven, eight and nine, has lined up on one side of the fence; across from it were wards one, two, three and eleven, which take in the Italian district around Lechmere and the poor district of North Cambridge. The "fence" was planked with promises to protect local interests.

The line-up next December will wipe out the ward system of politics, and councilmen will have to run on a city-wide program. Harvard representatives will find themselves philosophising to the factory workers from Lechmere, and Mickey Sullivan will have to chat with the Communists of Harvard Square. Perhaps when East Cambridge and Brattle Street are concerned with each other, the "good people of the town" will be a little less parochial, the "others" less resentful; and Harvard-Cambridge relationships more friendly.