Active Houses

Active Houses

November 2, 1955



One of President Lowell’s main reasons for building seven upper-class Houses was to provide a social and recreational unit for the large and scattered student body. Today, although College students are no longer spread throughout Cambridge rooming houses, the enrollment is larger than Lowell ever could have guessed in 1930. The enlarged College of 1955 demands that each House take on an increasingly important job: to provide new activities for its members and to help organize existing College-wide activities on a House level.

The College, of course, has numerous clubs and organizations, but many of them take so much talent and time that many students fail to join them. A fair-to-good violinist, for example, who does not meet standards of the Bach Society or Pierian Sodality, now finds few places to fiddle in an organized chamber music group. In short, there are many areas besides the successful intramural athletic program where Houses can make valuable contributions to undergraduate activities.

The recent formation of a House Debate League is a sign that some students see the need for more House activities. And although the Eliot House drama group drew on some outside support, it proved that House sponsorship of dramatics can produce a tempest with talent. These are encouraging signs, but many more such activities are needed. House newspapers, choruses, and chamber music groups may need little more than a suggestion and an organizer to develop the real talent now existing, silently, in each House.

Besides trying to begin new activities, each House should realize that it must increasingly help College-wide activities to organize on a House basis. The House Committees, especially, must accept new and important functions in such appeals as the Blood Drive and Combined Charities. Only the House Committees have the potential personal contact necessary for successful drives in a large College.

If the College grows any larger, these two tasks—sponsorships of new activities and organizations of College drives—will becomes even more important for each House. Even with no expansion, however, the Houses should take on a job that is now, unfortunately, only half done.