Fair, Perkins Oppose House Tutor Increase

The Houses need better facilities for their present non-resident tutors, and not an increase in tutorial staffs, two Masters agreed last night. The two ruled out any substantial enlargement of their own Senior Common Room.

"At present we have no trouble handling all the tutorials assigned to our House," explained Gordon M. Fair, Master of Dunster House. "What we really need is adequate office space for our present staff of non-resident tutors."

Fair said that under present conditions three of four tutors are forced to share one suite as their joint office. "Our goal is an office for each man," he noted.

"I don't understand all the excitement about increasing the number of tutors in each House," Fair added, "because 24 tutors, for example, can handle a lot of students."

Would Increase Crowding

Elliott Perkins '23, Master of Lowell House, stated that more tutors in the House would only make worse already overcrowded conditions. "If a tutor has to share a House office with a number of other tutors, he will be discouraged from spending more than one or two afternoons a week in the House," he said.

But the main objection against assigning more tutors to the Houses, Perkins explained, is the lack of "cohesion" which might result. "If the tutors were just coming and going, we would lose a prime objective of the House system," he said. "We don't want to become like Trinity College, Cambridge, which has a hundred tutors, many of whom don't even know each other."

Perkins remarked that he "would hate to be Master of a House with a group of second-class tutors, who were asked to use House offices, but not to participate in the decisions of the Senior Common Room."

"If there are going to be more tutorial meetings in the Houses, the House tutorial staffs will have to be enlarged," said Charles H. Taylor, Master of Kirkland House. "In principle we're trying to tutor the maximum number of Honors men in the Houses," he stated, "but this raises a number of serious problems." Taylor explained that the matter requires serious study by the Masters.