The Crimson Mailbag

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

One of the major failings of Harvard University is the fact that not five per cent of its officers, faculty, and students realize that the Harvard Union is a Freshman dormitory as well as a Freshman dining hall. It is among the saddest of daily experiences for the gentlemen who reside there to be confronted at table by the question, "Where do you live?" Invariably the answer, "Oh, I live right here in the Union," is followed either by a look of annoyance and the words, "Come on, I don't mean where are you right at this moment but where is your room? Don't be funny," or by a blank and amazed stare and "I didn't know there were rooms here," spoken in such a tone that it is not difficult to see what the speaker is imagining, either some bleak little hole-in-the-wall tucked away behind the kitchens or a dim alcove in a dingy attic.

For the benefit of that ignorant majority, then, let it be made known that: (1) There are rooms in the Union; (2) They are on the third floor, not in the attic, kitchen, or cellar; (3) They are handsome, spacious, and airy and have a commanding view, which is not only beautiful but is useful as well, in that it includes in its scope three large, accurate tower-clocks; (4) To live in them is to live as in a club--a floor below are ping-pong tables, library, and for the Merrimaniacs a History Reading Room. Two floors below are dining room, radio, fireplace, magazines, newspapers, piano, and demi-tasses. Three floors down are barber shop and pool room. (To be sure, these facilities are open to all Freshmen, but we alone are constantly within banister distance of them. Who but us can sleep till 8.28 A.M. and still reach our orange-juice before the grim-faced guardian of the portal bars the way with her flimsy-looking but entirely effective plush rope?)

Malign our lodgings, (if you can, in the face of such enormous advantages) Never visit them. It is not that. We neither heed calumny, nor need attention. It is the failure to realize their existence that appalls and sickens us. Ignored by the powers who appoint a proctor for every dormitory, unmentioned by that great work "Information in regard to the Freshman Halls with Floor Plans and Prices," forgotten by those who decree that every Freshman Dormitory shall have a representative on the Union Committee (of all things), we should almost welcome even adverse comment. As Lord Denry Wotton said. "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about." So, praise or condemn those magnificent rooms, but, for God's sake, know that they exist! John A. Day '37.