HCUA Committee Asks Longer Parietal Hours

Members of the HCUA parietals committee have drafted a report calling for a 16-hour-per-week extension of parietal hours.

Distriuted to Council members Saturday, the six-page report asks that girls be permitted in rooms in the Houses from 2 to 7 p.m. on Monday through Thursday; from 2 p.m. to midnight on Friday; from noon to 1 a.m. on Saturday--even after home football games--and from noon, to 8 p.m. on Sunday. The statement will come up for discussion at the next Council meeting, on Dec. 16.

The committee concedes that the University has a right to be concerned with the morality of students. "It is reasonable and proper that both students and administrators be anxious that the University provide guidance and information" for decisions regarding sexual behavior, it says.

Religious and psychiatric counsel are suggested as the proper forms of advice, however. The committee claims that reasonable parietal rules have little effect on the frequency of sexual intercourse by most students and do not encourage immoral behavior.

Parietal rules, "being impractical and inappropriate tools for influencing student behavior and morals," should therefore be determined mainly by the requirements of social order in the Houses, the report adds.

Stating that "psychologists, theologians and educators are far from agreement on what constitutes moral sexual behavior and what general rules, if any, can be postulated," the committee said the "College cannot and should not take a legislative and punitive attitude" toward student behavior with women.

"The deans of Harvard College itself," the committee reported, "have found society to be in a transitional period and thus should be hesitant to attempt to enforce any doctrinaire position."

In arguing for a liberalization of Friday night hours--the most drastic change--the committee states that a great majority of students favors the change. The extension would not inconvenience a significant number of students since all library facilities are available on Friday night, it maintains.

Saturday night hours should last until 1 a.m., the committee says, to permit students to return to their rooms briefly after attending an event in Cambridge or Boston during the evening. Students do not have to leave the Houses at midnight, it continues, since most upperclass college girls do not have to return until at least 1 a.m.

Opening the Houses at 2 p.m. instead of 4 p.m. on weekdays would provide additional opportunities for study dater, and would offer "greater flexibility with little or no inconvenience to anyone," according to the report.

In its request for late hours on all Saturdays, the committee points out that under present rules students do not really drink less on football Saturdays, and probably drive more than they would if there were parietals. In the past, excessive drinking followed by driving has been cited as a reason for ending hours at 8. At other colleges it is common practice to extend hours on football weekends, the report states.

The current parietals committee, composed of three House Committee chairmen and five HCUA members, took over the parietals study when the Council returned the report of an original committee for "study of the philosophical basis of parietal hours.