FEE FOR ALL

In the springtime a Freshman's fancy lightly turns, among other things, to thoughts of how he can wangle room and board in one of the Houses without compromising the family purse. Always before, there have been cases of students forced to pay more than they could reasonably afford; others have offered their money and little else as qualifications for membership. A committee of Masters has for the past year been studying the situation with a view toward a more equitable arrangement, and they feel that the newly announced price scale is the solution.

Future applicants will choose from a range of twelve prices, set at thirty-dollar intervals; in olden days there were twenty-one prices at twenty-dollar intervals. The most luxurious suites will be priced at $420, eighty dollars less than at present. So even the most expensive rooms will lie within reach of moderate incomes. Some such system as the three-fee system recently fixed at Yale would be from the point of view of the House-masters still simpler and thus more desirable. But there is too much variance in the quality of the rooms and the paying ability of students at Harvard to permit it.

That apparently timeless evil of the House system, its numerical inadequacy, will persist in spite of any juggling of rents. But the Masters have, at least on paper, cleaned out some of the unfairness which has been without intention a part of the old system of assigning rooms. Prices will in the future be on a more even keel among the Houses and students may allow themselves more than a fervent hope of getting what they want for what they can pay.