MUSEUM PIECE

The inadequacy of Harvard Hall has run the gamut from the joke of the University to the point where it is a genuine menance to the safety of the students it serves. Old buildings, untouched by the coarse hands of modernity, are treasures of which one can always be proud, but when they have become such a indispensable utility as Harvard Hall, colonial quaintness must give way to necessary alteration.

No one who has spent seven or eight minutes surging through stifling hallways and down creaking stairs from a second story classroom to the single entrance can help considering the possibility of a fire. It is not as if the hall were used as a dormitory, such as Hollis or Stoughton, in which the stairs and hallaways would be frequented by students singly or in pairs. At the rush hours about eleven, twelve, and one o'clock Harvard Hall literally bulges with scores of students flowing at a maddeningly leisurely rate along the hall on the second stairway, and spilling out of the lone doorway into the Yard.

Although Harvard Hall is so indispensable to the accomodation of classes that it would be impossible to close it for alterations at the present time, the firetrap must be made at least somewhat safe at the first opportunity. Christmas vacation would afford sufficient time to do a temporary piece of reconstruction on the ancient building. This would entail widening of the corridors at the expense of the size of the classrooms, the construction of broader stairways, and an additional entrance to the building. It is a step the University should have taken long ago in the interest of general safety and can be delayed no longer.