The Seven Wonders

Ever since the Houses started to sprout in the Charles River valley in the early 1930's, a gradual change has come over he roster of students living at College and in the Houses. Whether it was the House Plan itself, the Great Depression, or something else that inspired it, the policy of the Administration for the last decade or so has been to bring a cross section of the American Population into the unit of the wealthy and well-born that once was Harvard. The theory has been that education involves more than factual and theoretical knowledge; it includes an understanding of different people from different places and different income brackets, their backgrounds and their beliefs. However, merely throwing together a wide assortment of men is not enough. Texas has to have a chance to talk to Park Avenue; son of the milliner must really get to know son of the minor. To make this great barter of ideas work has been the big job of the House Plan. After 15 years of the Houses, can we say that they have done this job, and done it well?

Physically, the Houses have performed admirably. Although the architects discarded community washrooms, students can meet and listen to each other in dining hall, common room, library, music room, or in each others' suites. Alert House committees and Housemasters have further promoted the Plan with beer parties, dances, smokers, football games, forums bridge and rhumba lessons, and what-have-you.

For the men who really use the Houses, this has all been fine. But so far the one great block to the success of the Plan has been that the Houses have not been able to bring together enough of their residents. A large number of men have not cared to enter Houses activities, either because they belong to a social club which draws their allegiance, or because they simply aren't interested. The second group is the largest, and the Houses have not attracted these men because of a variety of little and big reasons.

The little reasons include many of the perennial complaints of Harvard men. No spiked punch or liquor at House dances, in some cases not-very-tasty food, restrictive parietal rules, and other annoyances. The big reasons are major lacks in the House programs. Some Houses simply do not offer a wide enough selection of extra-curricular goings-on to stimulate many members. And, most important, the Houses have never succeeded in what was to be a major function, that of serving as centers of education for large numbers of students. Forums and "concentration dinners" do exist, but the House have failed to become places where a man can improvise on his lecture hall learning, play with ideas, grow mentally.

In the coming years the Houses will have a tougher time doing their job than they have since the war. While the Administration probably will continue to keep the student body varied and representative, the College will contain fewer and fewer war veterans. Since the non-veteran has had less contact with large numbers of his countrymen, he is loss adaptable to the purposes of the House Plan than the veteran. For this reason the Houses, which have made a respectable start in their work, must now crack down on all the big and little faults which have so far slowed up the House Plan.