Housing Tight Again in Fall

Undergraduate Houses, halls, and dormitories, which last year found places for 4500 of the unprecedented 5400 College enrollment, will be jammed tighter than ever this fall.

With 1250 new applications for rooms in front of him, Robert B. Watson '37, associate dean of the College, in charge of undergraduate housing, said yesterday that commuting requirements cannot be lowered and that unless there is an unexpected shrinkage at registration the Houses may have to expand their capacities even further.

At the same time he was completing plans to place upwards of 100 beds on the floor and two balconies of the Indoor Athletic Building's basketball court in an effort to house, even temporarily, the overflow at registration.

154 Unfilled Applications

As matters now stand, the number of room applications exceeds the expected number of vacancies by 154, with room requests coming in at the rate of over 20 a week.

During the third week in September the 11 Yard halls will provide an estimated 624 vacancies, the group comprising Apley, Dudley, Claverly, and Little another 52, and the seven Houses 102 single spaces. At present, a total of 932 men have been considered eligible for these 778 vacancies.

In a letter which will be sent, early next week, to the 170 men required to commute by the University, Watson explains that "it will again be necessary for all students who entered or returned to College last June or who are entering or returning this fall and whose homes are in the vicinity of Cambridge to live at home during the fall term." The vicinity of Cambridge was defined, last year, as including all communities within 45 minutes traveling distance of Harvard Square.

He said, however, that a "substantial" number of vacancies expected to occur in February might alleviate the situation somewhat at that time. He estimated that 193 or more vacancies might show up at that time.

However, all commuters who have been forced to live away from the College for two terms have been taken care of, Watson said. In addition, men who commuted during the spring term, either by require- o'clock which was officially the hottest piont of the day with a mercury reading of 97 degrees, attracted two fatigued figures leaning on the nots of a Business School court. At the same hour a clerk at the Harvard Trust Company came up with a reading of 110 degrees, but there was some question as to whether he was compounding interest on the original figure