OUT OF TUNE

The Boston Club speeches on the House Plan disclose the position of University Hall on several not un-important details regarding the working out of the proposed social scheme. Mr. Greenough's mention of a "high table" in the dining hall for the resident masters and tutors, and of a separate common room for the same officials presents a jarring note in the utopian outline of the Harkness project.

One of the avowed leading aims of the new Houses has been to establish a social and intellectual concord between student and instructor, in short, to develop further President Lowell's conception of the University as a group of experienced and un-experienced students working together for the same end. It has been proposed to aid this aim by providing a common eating place to bring the men together. But contact between them would be decidedly hindered if one or the other had first to hurdle over the impediment of a "high table". The social touch in bringing tutor and student to dine in the same room would be little more than that had at a political luncheon in honor of a candidate for office. There the guest of honor sits at a head table and makes a formal speech, but no new personal contacts are formed.

If the House Plan is to go further than that, it would seem advisable to have the two types of residents sit elbow to elbow in the dining hall. Equally discordant is the idea of a separate commons for the instructors. While the older men might well have a small, auxiliary smoking room for their special use, to establish an individual commons apart from the students spells defeat to any objective of bringing both types of men together in an informal, friendly fashion. Where there must be continued visiting back and forth between two common rooms, the line of least resistance can but result in only occasional and formal, contact between tutor and student.

If the aims of the House Plan are to have a sporting chance for realization, care can well afford to be taken that artificial barriers are not brought in and raised between the two types of residents. A few measures in the tone of those uttered in the Boston meeting are all that is necessary to completely change the aspect and spirit of Mr. Harkness' original proposal.