Dutch Treat

(Ed. Note--The Crimson does not necessarily endorse opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters and only under special conditions, at the request of the writer will names be with-held.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

In this matter of eating meals in the new houses, the University states that it must have at the very lowest a guarantee of 10 meals a week for $7.50 for each student in a House.

Could not the University permit the total of ten meals to be made up not only by a student's own meals but also by the meals of his guests? Then if a man has a guest at each meal he eats in a House, he needs only to be present five times a week in the dining room. His friends can either pay him for the meal they eat with him there, or else entertain him themselves at some other time. That leaves 16 meals a week to eat where he chooses or where he must.

Of course this does not change in the least the price of meals, 10 for $7.50; but it does give a student much greater liberty as to where he may eat at, in other Houses, on the square, or in Boston.

If this would make the number of meals to be served more difficult to estimate, a man might be asked to notify the dining-room in general when he is bringing a guest.

If it is argued that a man should eat the meals himself because that is a part of the idea of the House Plan, then financial compulsion will not make him like to do so nor will it make the meals attractive.

Incidentally, it is very surprising that 10 meals for $7.50 represents the lowest estimate of the Harvard dining room management. For--to add but one reason to the many already given--at one club at Harvard with an unsubsidized dining-room and an expected minimum of twenty persons at a meal, meals are being offered singly, at 11 for $6.00, and at 6 for $3.75 lunches and dinners alone, with second helpings, soup and salad, and all very good because of the free competition of other eating places.

At bottom, the deliciousness of meals relative to cost and freedom from compulsion, financial or otherwise, are the conditions for success of the House dining-rooms. Edmund Callis Berkeley '30.