Wistful Vista

This week the number of unfilled applications for housing for married students passed the 1,100 mark. Officials of the University Housing Authority at Straus Hall estimate that by June the figure will rise to 2,500 and hit a peak of 3,000 in September. The gravity of the problem is obvious; these statistics mean that close to half of the married veterans at the University will be forced into quarters which cannot be considered adequate, and their ability to study efficiently must suffer as a result. At the same time, all expectations that the housing squeeze would straighten itself out with time, or be solved by governmental conjure, have faded with the emasculation of the Wyatt housing program and the recent prediction of local constructors that, barring miracles, the shortage will last for the next five years. Only temporary housing, erected and installed by the University, will prevent disaster during this period.

While the University authorities have acknowledged the problem, their attention has resulted in a make-do policy that will look good on the financial balance sheets, but will pale beside the efforts of other colleges. Harvard's record consists of importing 198 second-hand government units from a Maine project, setting these dwellings up on three areas adjacent to the University, and running them in conjunction with the government. Realizing the drop-in-bucket inadequacy of this effort, an administrative committee is quietly searching out the alumni and local realtors for vacant apartment buildings and hotels and is further conducting negotiations with the Cambridge City Council for erection of a small-scale project on the site of the Botanical Gardens. But while the talk and search for a needle in the haystack goes on, the University's hesitancy to assume positive responsibility becomes apparent.

University Hall points to the financial outlay involved in private construction, and admittedly any sizable project is expensive. But it is difficult to reason why M.I.T., with a housing shortage much less severe than Harvard's, has gone straight into the construction business and has erected 100 units of its own, which will supplement any windfall housing donated by the government. It is even more difficult to imagine that a comparison of the financial positions of the respective institutions would effectively explain why one is looking for more units, while the other has the land and bargains, Fabian-like, with the government, state, city, anybody, to come in and do the job for them. There is no questioning fiscal conservatism in normal times, but pre-war economies plus the traditional administrative lack of concern for the extra-academic welfare of the married student are highly dated policies while a growing percentage of the student body is forced, almost literally, into the cold.

If desperation methods such as Quonset huts are to be avoided, the Corporation must take stock of its own abilities to break the bottleneck. University lands are available; great portions of Soldiers Field He idle and could be utilized during the emergency. The fields close to the Business School would provide ideal sites if drained along the methods established by the University in establishing land for the government units. And it might well to remembered that Tech expects to get no less than 65 percent of its money back in rents, plus a small amount in serap value from its Westgate venture. Certainly an effort of this sort would answer critics of Harvard who claim that the University has defaulted in face of an essential phase of educating the veterans; a worthwhile task even if it costs money.