Alumni Meet October 2 On War Memorial Stalemate

Deliberations on the University War Memorial will pick up October 2 where they left off April 24--with Senator Leverett Saltonstall's twelve-man Alumni Committee again wondering how to carry out its own proposal for expanding the present Memorial Hall setting to provide new auditorium and student activity facilities.

Late last winter the joint Associated Harvard Clubs-Alumni Association Committee charged with considering commemoration for Harvard World War II dead had announced itself in favor of adding a theatre wing to Memorial Hall. In response to wide student support for an "Activities Center," expressed repeatedly in Student Council polls, the recommendation went on to suggest converting current Memorial Hall basement quarters of the modern Psycho-Acoustic Laboratories into "meeting places and offices for extra-curricular groups."

Cost Too High

At that time Laboraties Director Stanley S. Stevens remarked: "I am not at all anxious to move." Speculation grew during the course of the spring on the University's attitude toward the Alumni Committee scheme. Then in the April 24 interim report to the public Committee Chairman Saltonstall cast official doubt on the plan with the statement that investigation had disclosed "these memorials could not be constructed except for a sum considerably above" the specified $750,000 limit of a memorial fund-raising drive. The latter "ceiling" was alleged to stem from the concurrent existence of a $90,000,000 all-University drive for general endowment.

Saltonstall said yesterday that seven or eight members of the Committee who attended sessions of the Philadelphia Associated Harvard Clubs Meeting in June met informally with University officials there to discuss the Memorial issue.

Building Costs High

Rumors have circulated to the effect that the Committee may have in mind shelving the whole matter until a later date when construction costs drop to a lower level. Saltonstall refused to answer all specific questions but did confess that he considered building expenses today "quite high."

Original feeling in the Saltonstall group favored non-utilitarian possibilities. It was the active campaign of younger Alumni, led by Daniel P. S. Paul '46 and his present active "Committee for a Memorial Activities Center," which was generally credited with turning the tide.

In the pre-February discussion of various possibilities for a War Memorial, "utilitarian" choices included a Hygiene Center and an Arts Center as well as the majority-approved Activities Center.