Beating The Yard Bushes

Every spring, when Freshmen start House-hunting, a disturbing sort of intramural recruiting blossoms out among certain upperclassmen. Overflowing with love of House and other good intentions, they try to influence Freshmen House application preferences in ways which often prove embarrassing. This year, members of one House entertained stars of Freshman sporting teams at a reserved-table dinner. Another House's newspaper, in a special copy for distribution to the Yard, slandered an excellent group of tutors in a clumsy effort to praise them. In other years, even some of the younger Yard proctors have been known to preach to their charges on the virtues of the House from which they came.

Pride in one's House, in its teams, dances, and the representative group of students who make it up, is a healthy thing. But it must necessarily preclude the desire to skim off the cream of the Freshman Class for one's own House. For, far more important than any one House is the House System, which allows students in the College all the virtues and none of the vices of fraternities. Unless each House can remain representative, socially, intellectually, and athletically, the House System is headed for decay.

The Housemasters realize that wholesale propaganda campaigns will just increase the difficulty of keeping the Houses representative. Even though each Master takes pride in the competitive accomplishments of his House, they shun recruiting. Neither they nor their tutors have been connected with the recent unpleasantness.

But leaving said the results of personal contact between Freshmen and Housemen, how can the line be drawn between organized proselytism and offering Freshmen needed information? Easily, if House Committees and others let the Freshmen, who are the most concerned anyway, take the initiative. When, and only when, they visit the House should House members welcome them, point out the bright spots, dispel the rumors, and expose the stereotypes. But unless asked by the Union Committee or others, House members should not invade the Yard in person or in writing. Special enticements have no place at any time.

If, in this way, the Houses clung to their passivity, the sometime-abortive zeal of a useless competition to recruit would end.