Parietals

Neither the relentless logic of the Student Council nor the pious platitudes of the administration has changed any attitudes toward parietals lately. The eternal issue will be no more than that until students become interested in persuading the Faculty rather than convincing themselves.

The Administration has adamantly refused to be pinned down to any set of standards on which the question may be argued. Rigorous analysis of any explicitly defined defense of the present would reduce it to wool. A position that is only an intuitive judgement of parietal proprieties can be maintained only through fiction and deafness.

Harvard's solicitude toward feminine virtue comes largely from a desire to avoid an unneeded reputation for encouraging fornication. Not all this comes from pressures of 10 Garden Street, or even the further reaches of Route 16; Harvard is conservative simply because many of those making policy are frankly puzzled by the continuing change of social standards.

This uncertainty has caused abandonment of explicit arguments from moral grounds, but it is crucial that only the explicit is gone. From this point of departure rises a fiction that roommates require privacy, which would be much more convincg if roommates seemed enthusiastic. The rule restricts hours only on days when libraries and other study areas are available and supports myths about the academic character of the seventh day that the Faculty has long since ceased to honor. The Administration, indeed, has been forced to espouse a sort of conspiracy theory whereby requests for change are the work of a vocal minority that does not represent the true will of the undergraduate.

That these arguments are irrational will change no minds; but rational arguments are clearly not the useful counterfoil. The uncertainty exposed by the Administration's extremely unclear arguments cannot be met with thunders of outraged logic, for the issues are not essentially logical. Unfortunately, the alternative is that the Faculty sit down and discuss the issue with the Council, most unlikely when most regard the student group as combining the worst features of twerp politics and administrative annoyance.

Perhaps worst off are Freshmen, who have fewer privileges, and even less influence with the administrative board. Their eight o'clock Saturday hours do not stand up well to any argument. Yet in their failure to get reasonable concessions can be seen the heart of the upperclass dilemma, for the same resistance to change is working, and the same deafness prevails.

Only in this spirit could one have heard a Master say of the rule that parietals end when House functions begin: "I wouldn't want to defend it, but I'm not going to change it." A nervous adherence to the status quo is the only way to avoid facing the very disturbing problems behind the parietal rules.

The reality, then, is that student can do very little until the Administrative Board takes a new attitude. To stop harrying will not persuade the Masters and Deans nor make them take a new attitude, nor will it make them more amenable to reason. Perhaps individual students can bring some kind of understanding, but the chance seems remote.

So long as the Administration at once maintains a rigid set of rules and attempts to deny their importance by brushing off discussion, so long will the student have no change to change them. The light laugh of dismissal is unarguable. Maybe the best course is just to keep hammering, and maybe, after the Masters have been deprived of a little relaxation they may agree with at least Yale's recognition of the five-day week. Of course, they may not.