MDC Puts Bright Lights On Charles to Discourage Muggings, Touch Football

The Metropolitan District Commission yesterday installed three large light-posts along the Charles River bank across from Leverett and Winthrop Houses to prevent muggings in the Weeks Bridge area.

The big metal posts will probably spell the end of touch football along that part of the Charles, but Howard Whitmore, Jr. '29, Commissioner of the M.D.C. said that "the river bank isn't the place for that sort of thing anyway."

We can't keep the place neat with those people messing it up all the time," he added.

No more lights are planned for the immediate future, but one M.D.C. official said yesterday, "Eventually we'd like to have the whole river lit, all the way along Memorial Drive." Whitmore concurred, arguing that "any light we put up anywhere is an improvement.

The lights were put up following the suggestion of M.D.C. and Harvard University Police. The commission decided that extra lighting along the river would be the best way to combat would-be muggers who have gathered in the past along the Memorial Drive side of the river, under the protective cover of darkness, and waylaid Harvard students. "We're try.

The lights, which will blaze from about an hour before sunset to an hour before sunrise, were installed by the Cambridge Electric Company, and will cost the M.D.C. about $500 per year to maintain. They may cost some unwary frisbee player a cracked skull.