INTER-HOUSE EATING

Upperclassmen in the College will recall the agitation last year for a change in the regulation by which a member of one House cannot eat in another House except at the expense of the student with whom he is dining. The manifest inconvenience of this arrangement was discussed editorially in the CRIMSON, and led finally to the circulation of a petition among the House Committees, to discern the exact opinion of House members, and facilitate a change. Efforts to secure that change were unavailing then, but it was hoped that the authorities would act before College reopened.

However, no change has yet been announced. The question has apparently been shelved just where it was last June. This display of indifference is unfortunate, but not surprising. The question of what has become of the petition circulated among the House Committees is more to the point. Had it been carried through last year, and brought to the notice of the College, student opinion would at least have been restated clearly. Apparently it was lost somewhere in its passage along the north bank of the Charles.

Nevertheless, the inability of the upperclassman to eat, and pay for his own meal, in another House than his own will be as inconvenient during the coming year as it has been in the past. The argument that relaxing the ban would cause a severe strain on the dining rooms of some of the House to the neglect of others is beside the point, since, as the CRIMSON pointed out last year, it would be quite possible to limit the number of meals which a guest could sign for. The increase in the cost of bookkeeping would be so slight that even in a time of depression it is an insufficient reason for resisting a change that would be generally approved. Fundamentally, the present prohibition is not only an inconvenience, it is a regimentation of students which ought not occur here. The seven committees might well begin their activities this year by resubmitting the question of inter-House eating to the House Masters.