Students Condemn Engineering School Laboratory Equipment

While Harvard University has been pointing with pride to the College and many of its graduate schools, the Engineering School has been going down hill at a speed that will soon take it into oblivion unless drastic steps are taken.

This is the consensus of opinion obtained from the ranks of both undergraduates and graduates alike, canvassed by the CRIMSON during, the spring recess. All are unanimous in the belief that the Engineering School has failed to keep stride with the advance of the University as a whole.

Equipment Antiquated

In place of the expected modern and up-o-date school, the survey brought forth only tales of antiquated engines, outdated equipment, deplorably poor laboratory facilities and inadequate courses for those enrolled at the school.

Student in the School when approached on the subject, had little but condemnation for the laboratories there. Some expressed a doubt whether the Harvard Engineering School, unless it improved its equipment, would he able to attract men to the course for more than a few years more.

Two departments in particular, Metallurgy and Mechanical Engineering, came in for the most vitriolic criticism and graduates maintained that within two years, the equipment in Rotch laboratory for the study of metallurgy, and the engines in the Gordon McKay Laboratory would be so long obsolete that they would be useless for instruction purposes.

No Aeronautics

Another complaint that was loudly voiced was that the Engineering School furnished practically no instruction in aeronautics. Only one half-course, Engineering 58, devotes any of its time to aerodynamics and students feel that the School is woefully deficient in that branch of engineering. Almost every other engineering school in the country, they claim, has extensive instruction in aeronautics.

Laboratory Obsolete

Gordon McKay Laboratory is described in the catalogue-as "a building with a ground floor space of over 30,000 square feet devoted to laboratory instruction and research in mechanical and civil engineering." The equipment, it states, covers the following subjects: Steam Machinery, Gas and Oil Engines, Fuels, Air Compression, Mechanical Refrigeration, and Hydraulics.

An investigation of the layout and questioning of graduate students disclosed that some of the engines are over 40 years old, and except for a very few pieces of equipment, the laboratory is nearly 20 years behind the latest trends. The new machinery, which students consider adequate for instruction, consists of a Diesel engine, temporally out of commission, a tank for work in the mechanics of fluids and some tunnels used in ventilation engineering. The reciprocating engines and gasoline motors were described as "ancient"

As for the metallurgy department students compain that they are forced because of inadequate facilities is Rotch, to trek to the Watertown Arsenal, where they can use the government's plant. The Engineering School furnaces, they complained, would not melt the metal, and according to one there was a lone calibrated graduate for measuring materials. The accuracy of these assertions could not be checked definitely.

Clifford Satisfied

Dean Harry E. Clifford of the Engineering School when questioned about the charges of poor laboratory equipment, stated that he believed the facilities adequate and that the Arsenal and the Rindge Technical School, where the shop-work is done, were so well supplied with apparatus, that duplication of their plants by the Engineering School would be pointless. The engines in McKay laboratory, he said were modern enough to be used for instruction in the fundamentals of engineering, and it is that branch that the school attempts to prepare its students