CLUBS IN THE HOUSE PLAN

This morning's correspondent puts definite voice to a question which has long been in the minds of many undergraduates. Last Spring a good deal of discussion was heard in regard to the fate of the clubs under the House System and at that time President Lowell in speaking before various undergraduate organizations assured their members that an effort would be made to solve this problem by supplying food from the College kitchens to the various club houses. This plan has since been found to be impractical. Nothing definite can be said of the fate of the clubs at present except for the fact that those in charge of working out the House Plan are in sympathy with the general aims of the clubs and appreciate their potential value in bringing men from the different Houses together.

Undoubtedly many clubs will find that the large minimum charge required for board in the Houses will make it impossible to serve meals in the clubhouses. In many cases this can hardly fail to result in the eventual dissolution of the clubs so affected. It is, however, well known that many of the clubs have had pretty hard sledding even under past conditions and that even more have been founded purely as a means of mitigating the unpleasantness of eating around. If the atmosphere in the Houses approximates even to a limited degree the attractiveness hoped for by its well-wishers, no great loss will be suffered if these clubs do go out of existence. Some financial embarrassment will no doubt be felt and a certain small group of persons made to suffer where suffering is not deserved. It is particularly unfortunate that the large minimum board charge required by the College will undoubtedly direct the resultant ill feeling at the House System and those responsible for it.

If, however, as is earnestly hoped, some revision downward may be made in the minimum board charge, there will be ample opportunity for the existence of clubs which serve one meal a day. Such organizations have a successful prototype in the Metropolitan lunch clubs, and would perform a valuable service in bringing men of different Houses together several times a week. A revision of the club system in this direction would retain most of the real advantages of the present system and do away with the isolated clique tendency which finds its fullest and worst development in so many other American Colleges.

As to the contention that a shift from club or fraternity houses to the rooms offered by the House System will work an even greater hardship little need be said. President Lowell has repeatedly pointed out that men are not to be forced to enter the Houses. If it so develops that the atmosphere in the Houses is such to attract men to them, the extinction of the clubs involved will be but another example of the sound principal of survival of the fittest.