Yale Celebrates Anniversary of Houses

Several Harvard House Masters journeyed to Yale University last weekend to help kick off a week-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of Yale's residential colleges, counterparts of the Harvard House system.

The residential system originated at Oxford and Cambridge Universities in England during the Middle Ages and was established at Harvard and Yale in the 1930s with funds donated by Edward S. Harkness. Yale class of 1897

Yale initially rejected Harkness's offer to finance house construction but reconsidered after Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell accepted $13 million from the Yale alumnus to institute the House system at Harvard.

At the invitation of Yale President A. Bartlett Giamatti, Harvard's Senior House Master, Alan E. Heimert '49 of Eliot House, joined representatives from the English universities Cambridge and Oxford as a guest speaker.

Heimert and his fellow emissaries dunned academic robes prior to the assembly and marched through Yale's Old Campus and the New Haven Green.

In his remarks following the procession. Heimert discussed "the difference in nomenclature between Yale and Harvard."

"In naming its Colleges, Yale honors intellectual achievement, while Harvard honors past presidents," he said.

Each of the Harvard Houses has a sister College at Yale, said Phyllis H Bott, co Master of Dunster House, who attended the ceremony with her husband Raoul and Lowell Masters Mary I N and William H Bossert '59.

At the annual Harvard-Yale football game. Harvard House intramural teams often play their Yale rivals, said Mary Bossert.

Houses also host visitors from their Eli affiliates. The Botts exchange "football visits" with Master Robin Wink of Dunster's sister College, Berkeley College.

While the systems at Harvard and Yale are similar, Heimert says the difference is that Yale Colleges lack the resident tutorial staff important to Harvard's Houses.

"But in both cases, the primary advantage is creating a community on a human scale," he adds.