Winthrop Rooms Stuffed; Guest Suite Converted

Overcrowding in Winthrop House has forced the House to put undergraduates in its guest suite and to put an extra student in each of six other suites.

A survey of the Houses revealed yesterday that all of the others have been able to solve their overcrowding problems without converting rooms. Many, however, were forced to allow more students to live off campus this year than last. Two Houses, Leverett and Adams, had to give off-campus living permission to a few juniors. Although the final number has not yet been tabulated, there will probably be about 200 men living off campus this year. Last year there were 154.

At registration time Winthrop had more of the nearly 140 men in the College without rooms than any of the other Houses. Bruce Chalmers, Master of the House, said yesterday that he at first tried to solve the problem by allowing students to live off campus and by permitting a few to transfer their affiliation to other Houses.

Early this week, however, when there were still nine Winthrop students living on cots in living rooms of the temporary suites to which they had been assigned, it became clear that something else had to be done.

"We considered converting nine suites and putting one extra student in each," Chalmers said. But after talking it over with the House Committee and resident tutors, we decided that the inconvenience of not having a guest suite would be more than compensated for by the greater comfort of the twelve or so undergraduates who would have been crowded if we had put the three extra students in regular suites," he added.

Chalmers said that he hoped the use of the guest suite would be a "very temporary" solution to the problem. He would not predict, however, when the suite could be used for guests again.

In the past, the guest suite has been used to house speakers who came to talk to the Winthrop House Forum and former residents of the House who were in Cambridge on short visits.