Theories Still Rampant as Harvard Prepares for Opening of New Houses--Camp is Divided on Issue

Harvard's 295th year will see the beginning of the mooted House Plan. Although the black tower of Dunster House breaks the sky line on the Charles and the blue and gold of Lowell House rears itself above the masses of brick piled below Mt. Auburn Street to testify to the corporeal change which has already begun to take place in the University, both the aims and the eventual development of the new move toward the socialization of the undergraduate years in Cambridge remain indefinite.

While the House Plan may be said to have originated from the idea first nurtured in the erection of the Freshman dormitories, which are soon to assume new functions as additional House units, only the extremists are bold enough to advance starting theories concerning the future glories or defects of the scheme. Thus far the battle seems to have raged about two salient points advanced by prospective boosters and knockers. The first idea is that the House Plan will degenerate into a glorified club system and incorporate together with all that is English, dilettahte, and emblazoned, a supreme disregard of the "individual." These epithets, which usually assume the opprobrious position of stigmas when hurled hot in undergraduate conversations, take their origin from two sources. The first of these is the method used for selecting men for the first two Houses, and the second is from the statement made by President Lowell to the effect that the men already in a House will have the major voice in saying who shall go in after them.

Fully as loud are the clamors of those who oppose the second possible development. They picture Harvard as a future real estate development with all the streets named "Main Street", all the suburban dwellers called "Babbits", all the students "brothers under the skin", and all the inmates of various, races, creeds, economic standing, social preeminence, intellectual interests and oddities--in fact all kinds and characters forced into one big family, which is supposed, unlike most families, to be free from dissension. The great cry is aimed at the supposed sacrifice of "individuality". This point of view is that of the objectors who have seized upon "cross-section" as a term of great significance, while, as a matter of fact, it may mean anything from something to nothing.

More moderate critics regard the House Plan as a move which will, by various checks and balances, avoid either of these extremes. Little is safe to predict other than that the housing quarters will be newer than the present dormitories, the Yard will no longer be the center of domiciliary attraction, the restaurants on the Square will lose money, the Houses will supplant the classes in intra-mural rivalry, the members of the undergraduate body and the faculty will be in a more favorable position for the development of mutual understanding, and real estate prices on the Charles will rise.

But while the future students of Harvard under the new organization are experiencing qualms of apprehension, joy, or revolt, the physical aspect of the University is undoubtedly bewildering those graduates of War days, the students of the era of John the Orangeman, and especially the inhabitants of Harvard when the mauve decade was in full swing and Harvard had a philosophy department. For even the massed chimneys of Dunster House, both the useful and the purely aesthetic ones, are only a few of the outward signs of change. The towering bulk of the new gymnasium opposing the Georgian structure of Lowell House has meant that the small buildings below Mt. Auburn Street have given way before the forward march of mass education, that the rural aspect of the streets in the vicinity of the Freshman Dormitories has stiffened into the more canyon-like semblance of Wall Street. Already the walls of the Power Plant across from Weld Boathouse have fallen, and the foundation for the third unit is about to be placed.

Standish and Gore will be merged into another unit, while McKinlock and an addition across the way will make still another. These with Smith, as a unit, and the combined facilities of Russell, Randolph, and Westmorly with a dining room built on the present site of Russell Annex as still another, will complete the Houses so far planned.