The Masters Whisper About Cohabitation

The House Masters have been meeting in secret sessions for the past few weeks and the only thing that is known for sure about their discussions is the subject: sex.

The Masters, of course, don't call it that. A whole vocabulary of bureaucratic euphemisms has evolved for the discussion of sex at Harvard. When a male student and a female student are living together and having sex, the Masters call it "cohabitation." When a student has left his or her own room to move in with a girl or boy-friend, the word used is "self-reassignment."

The Masters discussions on sex began when President Bok, irked by a spate of letters from concerned parents who suspected that illicit goings on were occurring here, asked them to figure out what the rules are about students cohabitation, whether these rules are being broken, and what could be done to enforce them.

Lowell House Master Zeph Stewart, the chairman of the so-called Masters' Informal (the forum for the high level sex parleys), said this week that the rules that a student agrees to when he signs his rooming contract stipulate that the student can live only in the room to which he has been assigned.

Even in Massachusetts Hall, some suspect that this rule isn't being followed to the letter. "If we have practices one way and realities another way, we ought to figure out what the divergences are and what we ought to do about them." Bok said Tuesday. "I don't want to have to be faced with reading rules out of the rule book to parents and then having them tell me that the realities are something entirely different."

Just what Bok has on his mind is hard to tell. He says that a change in rules, such as the reinstatement of parietal hours in Harvard dorms, is out of the question. Bok does not rule out the possibility of enforcing the current rules prohibiting a student from living in a room not his own.

The only thing Bok seems sure of is his desire to have the Masters draw up "some thought-out policy" on cohabitation at Harvard, so that he can use it to ward off letters from parents who are worried that he is not acting in loco well enough.

Meanwhile, all of the Masters are keeping their lips sealed on everything to do with the topic. "I'm sorry but you'll have to ask someone else on that one," was the way Bruce Chalmers, Master of Winthrop House, responded to questions about the discussions Tuesday. "I normally like to answer questions from The Crimson, but in this case I can't even say if I know anything."