Religion Committee Inspects PBH, Decides on No Changes in Program

Phillips Brooks House's soul was saved this month.

Provost Buck's Committee on Religion decided to leave the 50-year-old Yard organization alone. Through the years PBH has become a social service center with no direct emphasis on the spiritual side. The students working with Graduate Secretary Robert L. Fischelis '49 didn't want that changed.

But last fall the University Corporation and Overseers decided that something should be done about the problem of religion at Harvard. They said no to President Conant. The President was in poor health at the time, so he told Provost Buck about the idea. The Provost was busy with the extra work the extra work the president's illness had given him, so he got in touch with Dean Bender. Buck and Bender formed a committee, and the Committee investigated.

During the weeks that followed, rumors and suggestions were heard and repeated with a rapidity that outran press reports. The old question of religion's place in a university came up. Other schools were cited. The idea of a chaplain, courses taught by ordained clergymen, even compulsory chapel were bandied about, then dropped. Inevitably, the Committee got around to PBH.

Start New Movement

PBH has been thought of by generations of Harvard men as the center for religious activities. The House's motto, "Charity, Piety, and Hospitality," was linked with the precepts of religion. It seemed the logical place from which to launch a back-to-religion movement.

The Committee put forward a list of suggestions that would have turned Brooks House back 25 years by stressing only one-third of Phillip Brooks' original intentions in proposing the House--"to serve the religious, charitable, and social interests of the University." The new emphasis would have made it resemble its nominal counterpart at Yale, Dwight Hall.

PBH undergraduates were against the move. But they did not protest out loud. For 50 years, since its dedication in 1900, it had been building a record and tradition as a meeting place for any students who wanted to use it and a service organization for Harvard, Cambridge, and Boston. PBH was sure that its work and reputation would fight for it with no outside help. PBH was right.

For, although the Committee's report won't be out before the end of this term, Dean Bender told graduate secretary Fischelis that the University would change nothing at Brooks House. It would be permitted to grow in the same unique way that has distinguished it throughout the country's colleges, and made it a center in the Yard since the turn of the century.

Brooks' Memorial

True to its own tradition, PBH has been changing since it was built. At the time, there were no upperclassman Houses, and the freshman Union had not yet been built. Brooks thought that a building like PBH was needed. Brooks had a reputation for being a powerful and convincing preacher in his day. He campaigned for his idea, and a group of friends built it after his death.

But when it finally opened its doors to the University in 1900, the Union had just been completed as a meeting and lounging place for undergraduates. At the time, too, a religious movement was sweeping the country. The YMCA had been organized with principles close to those Brooks had followed. So the massive building was used as its headquarters.

Competition soon began building up all over Cambridge. Harvard Square became a business and social center. The YMCA grow too large for the house and moved to its own quarters. Churches sprang up around the University and formed students groups of their own. By the early '20's, all the religious societies that had operated from PBH were dropped or absorbed by churches. According to a Yale divinity student in 1944 who did an extensive paper on Brooks House, religious interest here was "suffering from arterio-sclerosis."

With the new trend, PBH began to bring the light activity it had held in the background for so long--service to the College and community. The new subway to Boston enabled it to expand its work until today, it sends volunteers to 33 Boston settlement Houses to teach kids how to speak and write, how to play basketball and baseball, how to make wooden bookstands and tin ashtrays for Christmas gifts, and how to have fun.

Free Entertainment

The work of the University's largest organization continued to spread as its members (800 last year) found more and more ways of helping students and people. A ticket agency operates to save undergraduates time and expense in reserving seats for plays and shows in Boston theatres. A speakers group was formed to recruit entertainers and speakers to lecture and perform, free of charge, for the experience, to any group that wanted them.

An undergraduate Faculty tutors any child who has trouble with his arithmetic or French. One group collected a ton and a half of used clothes to send to Europe last year. Another found Thanks giving dinners for almost fifty needy Boston families.

The war opened even more opportunities. Blood was needed, and PBH has been making and breaking records every year since, topping off all records with this year's total. The Contact Committee, which operated during the war has just revived. Through it, University men in the service are told of other University men in their camp. They can find the addresses of men they knew as students and they can send a friend a letter through PBH which will forward mail to a serviceman anywhere in the world. The committee also notifies Harvard Clubs throughout the country of an ex-student in the armed forces stationed nearby.

Stillman Visitors

A group called the Special Events Committee runs the annual tea dances that gives anyone who has a mind for that sort of thing a chance to look over the new crop at Radcliffe in an atmosphere more relaxed that that of the 'Cliffe's jollyups. A Hospital Visiting Committee makes daily trips to Stillman to carry mail, assignments, books, and stationery for bedded students.

The tutors who travel into Boston every week find that the work helps them as much as it does the kids. Many plan to be teachers later in life, and say that this type of work is the best experience they could have.

They also find startling things about the condition of public education in Boston. Primarily, their job is to help the kids who are having trouble with certain studies in school. One tutor reported that his charge was "intelligent, but up against the abominable educational system of Boston Latin School--a system that has not changed since the 17th century. Unfortunately," he adds, "one cannot fight a reactionary system, but one can help its less fortunate victims."

Another of the "undergraduate faculty" said his tutee's school teacher was of the "work-it-out-yourself" system, and refused to help his students.

But by far the most important, and for all concerned, the most satisfying, of PBH's activities is the work it does with local wails in the settlement houses. Besides the tutoring, parties, coaching, and civilizing, PBH recently began another operation in its healthy-minds-inhealthy-bodies program.

One-Third III

Third-year students from the medical school, part of that school's PBH committee (The Law School has one, too) made up a traveling clinic that tours the settlement houses for periodic check-ups on the kids. The plan was launched in the fall of 1950. By Christmas, the would-be-doctors will have visited 14 settlement houses. The examinations are completely advisory in nature, but so far have disclosed that 30 percent of those examined had something physically wrong with them that needed, and consequently got, the attention of a doctor.

The Harvard students who worked with them, in their reports, say the kids have a genuine affection for them and the system. The house in Roxbury is not big enough nor the leaders numerous enough to take care of the crowd, says one leader. Another claims his group is the only one in the neighborhood that has not caused any trouble.

Phillips Brooks may not have realized when he started the idea of service that it would take this turn, for PBH has changed from the days of its conception. It will probably change many more times in the years to come.