Married Grad Students Lack Housing

The young Bryn Mawr graduate looked up from her ironing board. "The living room is no place for work like this," she remarked, "and it's certainly no atmosphere in which to raise children."

Conditions in the apartment gave substance to her words. Two children of preschool age were using the living room as a playpen, several times coming dangerously close to extinction from electrical wiring, paperweights, and other threatening objects. The kitchen, its plaster peeling, was too narrow to contain an ironing board and chair; and the bedroom, far from copious, held two beds and a cradle.

"I can't let the children play outside," the mother said, "because I have to keep an eye on them. You see, we haven't a yard, and it's a crowded street. We had to repaint the place ourselves; the rent is $85 a month. One of the kids has to sleep on the sofa.

"But I shouldn't complain too much," she added quickly. "My husband is a Yalie, and we didn't know the situation in Cambridge. From what I hear, we were lucky to get within ten minutes' walk of the Square."

Such a case is not atypical. "Almost anything bad that can be said about married students housing," states Dean Elder, "will underestimate the situation." The married graduate student at Harvard is an exploited creature. High rents, inadequate facilities for children, and overcrowded living conditions are stimulating an exodus from Cambridge to Arlington, Somerville, run-down sections of Watertown--even as far as Revere.

This move seriously weakens the concept of an academic community. "The tragedy of the world," Albert North Whitehead once commented, "is that those who are experienced have feeble imaginations... The task of a university is to weld together imagination and experience."

Martini Atmosphere

A true welding can take place only if students can meet their teachers on a social, as well as on an academic plane, if ideas in the seminar can be rehearsed over the more informal atmosphere attended by the martini.

The House system, while deemphasizing the martini, is an attempt to create an academic community for the undergraduate. Except for tutors, however, the opportunities which this system tries to offer hardly exist for many graduate students, who are isolated from the University by distance. Even worse than this is the loss which occurs when many students--apprised of the housing situation--are dissuaded from coming to Harvard at all.

The Cambridge landlord occupies an enviable position. Because apartments convenient to the University are at a premium, he is in a position to name his price, and to pick and choose tenants from a swarm of applicants. Last year, for example, the Harvard Housing Trust received 2944 inquiries, whereas 874 apartments were offered.

Moreover, many of these apartments are unsuitable for student living; and it is only the severe shortage which encourages landlords to offer them. Despite the acknowledged scarcity, many apartments remain on the Housing Trust list for months. An example of this is an apartment on Bigelow Street--a bedroom, a living room and a kitchen. No children are allowed; the rent is $125 a month.

Better locations come even higher. A one-bedroom apartment near Radcliffe, on Walker Street, is listed at $225 monthly. It has been listed for eight weeks, with no takers.

'No Children' Restriction

In an era of inflation, these rents may not seem astronomical; but the average student in GSAS, for example, has an extremely limited income. The frequent "no children" restriction adds to the graduate student's dilemma. Landlords are not entirely to blame here; an over-whelming percentage of them ask if the child is of school age. If he is not, they assert, complaints are received from other tenants on the grounds that they are prevented from studying.

The burden of providing adequate housing for the married students falls upon the Harvard Housing Trust, which has developments in Shaler Lane and Holden Green. These are attractive, low-rent apartments. A two-bedroom unit rents for $75 monthly; three bedrooms, $90; and a four-bedroom apartments is $105.

But these apartments can only accommodate one-seventh of the demand. The remainder of the married graduate students is forced to devise expedients. Everybody finds something. Some live in trailers; others take big apartments and rent rooms. Often, two couples share a small apartment while they wait for an opening at the Housing Trust. The length of time on the waiting list is largely a matter of luck. For some, it is a matter of two or three weeks; others wait months in cramped quarters. Mrs. F. K. Patterson, assistant director of the Harvard Wives, says that married students are generally "good sports about the type of place they have to live in." A large majority of them have children; these usually stay put once they find a a place.

For those who are lucky enough to get into Holden Green or Shaler Lane, the wait is worthwhile. Reasonable rent, clean paint, and a five-minute bicycle ride ("with practice," one student asserted) are the rewards. For those who obtain private rentals through the Housing Trust, the results are not quite so fortunate.

These students are forced to find ways of meeting a higher rent. The most common method is for the wife to work. Typing and babysitting are favorite occupations. The advantage of typing research papers is that the wife can do it in her own home, and at the same time mind her children. Babysitting offers a similar inducements and a frequent form of this is taking care of another family's children on weekends.

Need can force some more extreme measures. Many do without a telephone because they cannot pay the bill. One wife, in order to buy a washing machine which would enable her to take in laundry, needed $50 in advance. Four Harvard undergraduates agreed to advance her the money on the condition that she clean their dirty linen for the entire year. A contract was signed.

Besides being a rather trying experience for many young mothers, the necessity to work leaves them in an isolateed social world. For these, Harvard's advantages are not within easy reach. Concerts, lectures and exhibitions are too time-consuming for a combination housewife-mother-laundress.

Lease System

Financial difficulties are further aggravated by the prevalent lease system. Under this setup, rooms are rented for a full year beginning in September. The student must therefore pay for his apartment even if he does not use it in the summer; this constitutes a serious drain on his resources. Summer sublets almost always entail a loss, since the supply in a college community far exceeds the off-season demand. This enhances the attractiveness of such a location as Revere--a resort area--where a profitable sublease is relatively easy to acquire.

But budgetary considerations are not the only ones forcing married students away from Cambridge. More suburban areas offer, many parents feel, two clear--cut advantages: better play areas and better schools for their children.

The big lure of a two-family house in Arlington is a yard for the children. Exerting a bigger influence upon parents, however, is the problem of the quality of Cambridge elementary schools.

Physical facilities of some of these schools--Agassiz and Peabody, for example--are more than adequate. The main complaints of these graduate students concern the calibre of teaching. "What can you expect when appointments are made arbitrarily instead of by merit?" one father in GSAS demanded.

Because these parents in most cases cannot afford to send their children to private institutions, they insist all the more upon a high standard for city-run schools; and many of them feel the Cambridge elementary school system to be subpar. Among those who remain in Cambridge, there is considerable resentment against the School Committee. One father of three children asserted that a majority of the Committee sent its children to private schools, because it knew the situation.

Judson T. Shaplin '42, associate dean of the Faculty of Education and a member of the School Committee, denies this. His own children attend the Peabody School, which he described as "more than adequate." Moreover, he said, many Harvard faculty members send their children to such neighborhood schools as Peabody, Russell and Agassiz.

"These graduate students," states Shaplin, "have a hypercritical attitude towards school. Most of them have gone through pretty rigorous educational competition, and they want to avoid this for their kids. There is a terrifically protective atmosphere in this regard, for they want their children to go to nothing but the best."

"Neighborhood schools," he adds, "are better than they are given credit for by the Cambridge climate of opinion. There are two ways in which the problem of the school problem can be met. By giving up--moving to Arlington, or by staying to fight. The schools here are good, and they can be tremendously improved through parent-teacher associations and political action."

The University can do little about the school problem. It is, however, attempting to alleviate housing conditions. Bring graduate students back into the Harvard community is considered so integral that it is a part of the Program for Harvard College. $7 million has been proposed for he construction of buildings housing approximately 400 families.

Although this number will not completely solve the graduate housing problem, it will make a sizeable dent in it. Moreover, the existence of so many good apartments will make the Cambridge landlord a little less cocky. Specific sites have not yet been chosen; in an official brochure, however, the Administration states that it "has in mind fairly high buildings with adequate play and parking spaces, near parks and good schools."

Concurrently, spokesman for Hunneman and Co., real estate agents for the University has suggested that single houses at Kirkland Place, Hubbard Park, Memorial Drive, now used for faculty residences, might be used to house married graduate students.

A long-term solution is definitely needed. It may be that the married graduate student is a postwar phenomenon; but statistics indicate that his number is increasing, and he is probably here to stay. The plight of the married student, if not desperate, is nonetheless increasingly uncomfortable.

Program plans insure that the situation is improving. This $7 million project represents the first step the Harvard Housing Trust has taken since its inception in 1925. Housing for married students must become better; for, as the woman in P. B. H. who represents the Trust says, "It can't get any worse."