Full House

Dean Bender's annual report on the state of the College contains a large section on the House problem. This emphasis is well placed, for the last few years have proved, as Dean Bender points out, that "the Houses are still far from realizing the ideal which Mr. Lowell and Mr. Harkness had in mind when the House system was established." With the post-war decrease in tutorial, the Houses should provide the force to counteract "mass education and student anonymity."

The Houses do not provide such a force today, and the Dean's report does not say how they can do so. Instead the report emphasizes the importance of House size, agreeing with the Masters that 300 is the maximum number that can be handled effectively. With the anticipated enrollment, this would leave 460 upperclassmen outside the Houses with non-resident affiliations. The report says this is probably the best solution to the problem but acknowledges the plan's "undesirable features."

This view greatly overestimates the importance of size. If 65 men in each House were changed from non-resident to resident status, it could not have any crucial effect on House functions and would eventually allow everyone to live in a House. This would also case the rent problem for students, and enable the University to rent more rooms in the outside dormitories to graduate students.

The report states but underestimates the danger of leaving 460 men out of the Houses. If the Houses do become an integral part of a Harvard education, as the Dean hopes, it would be a terrible policy to force any upperclassman to live elsewhere.

What is need now is less talk about the difficulty of working with a large House and more actual work in molding Houses with their present numbers to conform with the ideal of the House system. Too many House Masters are using the size argument as an excuse for inactivity. Much can be done to make the Houses a basis for social life, a mechanism for informal contact with the faculty, and a means of combatting student anonymity.

Specifically, here are methods that individual Houses have already found successful; concentration dinners, informal bull and beer gatherings, discussion groups in several fields, regular informal record dances, dramatic or musical shows, forums, House dark rooms, and encouragement of tutors to eat with students.

The problem pointed up in the Dean's report is very important. The answer to it lies not in dreams about a smaller enrollment but in constructive action in the Houses. If House Masters pooled their experiences with present methods and discussed new ones, they could map out a definite program that would make the system resemble the Harkness ideal regardless of whether there are 300, 365, or even 400 men in a House.