The Harmonious Feast

Although Harvard University is a unit in every legal and public sense, its members cannot generally meet each other at meals without additional expense beyond their board bill; often they cannot eat together at all in University dining halls, which are as complicated and mutually restrictive as the customs system of the German states before the Zollverein.

Since Harvard has created its far-flung culinary empire because it believes with Locke that men in free association will talk themselves into a high state of culture, Harvard ought to take the final step and permit all of its board-paying members to dine in any of its facilities at any meal. Under this plan, if a law student wants to eat at Dunster House or a Radcliffe girl prefers to lunch at Harkness Commons, they may--so long as those normally assigned to a dining hall have space for themselves and a guest.

This proposal may appear impractical at first glance; however, in view of the Dining Hall Department's success with Interhouse in the College, there is little reason to malign Carle Tucker's talents by supposing he would be unable to enlarge the scope of his system. Indeed, it should be a simple matter to use the example of Dudley House lunches and limit outsiders to a specific, manageable number each hour, a number necessarily different in each dining hall. Students would be required only to sign their names and addresses; the sponsor requirement would be abolished, and the individual dining halls would adjust their finances, as they do now, among themselves.

For many men in Harvard College, this new plan for the University, which envisages such cost-free benefits as dinner in the airy splendor of Kresge Hall or lunch in a friend's House, contains, alas, one inherent blot. Radcliffe's girls are also members of the University, and they too could eat in the Houses at will; escaping the clutches of Messrs. Hazen and Albiani, they would invade the precincts of maledom and put an end to unfettered, masculine repartee.

Clearly, there is truth in this vision, but the dour alternative that prevails today is no answer either. Just as there are many to whom meals without women are dismal affairs, so too there are others who would decry the end of insulation from the female. At present, the misogynists have their way, but under the plan suggested here, neither side would suffer unduly. For those who wish it, girls will be there; for the rest, the dining halls are surely large enough to provide tables and escape. The man who feels unsafe even when women are sitting at some distance from him at a different table, that is no man at all.

Some may fear that the elimination of sponsors will destroy the home-like atmosphere of the Houses. They see the dining hall as a focus for developing House spirit, and they would view unsponsored diners from the outside as an intrusion, a disrupting, alien influence in a tightly knit group of friends. It is a pity that this vision of the Houses squares so poorly with reality. Four hundred undergraduate men hardly constitute a family, even if they do happen to take their meals at Leverett House. New faces from other Houses and other Harvard institutions should not, in any case, offer a threat to a House which approaches the traditional ideal, especially when the majority of people at each table will inevitably still be House residents. Finally, this plan will effect one more real advantage that cannot be dismissed, namely, more informal contact and hence less tension between Harvard and Radcliffe.