EAT, DRINK, AND BE CIVILIZED

Those Houses which believe in the intellectual value of the high table are faced with the unsavory situation of majority oppression. At Adams, Lowell, and Winthrop the inconvenience which House dinners cause the students not sitting at the high table counteracts the theoretical academic benefits. At quarter past six the dining hall doors are flung open, a vast throng pours through, scrambles for seats, and clamors for food: this approximates the scene which takes place each week in these Houses. And this mass sits and waits while a small group of tutors and undergraduates eat in tuxedo splendor to the tune of choice "dinner-table" conversation. Until the subway rush on the nights of House dinners is eliminated and some method produced to let the uninvited majority eat at its pleasure, it appears improbable that the idea of the House dinner will be adopted by the other units.

The purpose of a House dinner is not to stimulate artificially that mystical thing, "House spirit," but rather to provide a weekly occasion when tutors, their associates, and several favored students can join for a few hours of dinner and common room talk. To the six or seven undergraduates invited it gives the opportunity of becoming better acquainted with their superiors, of participating in stimulating discussion of an academic sort. Conceived as such, the dinner is another fine tool for the machine of liberal education. Therefore the present obstacle to its application and extension should be removed by eliminating the restriction now imposed on the majority.

No further complaints about House dinners can be made if persons not formally invited are permitted to eat at the regular time, i.e. between five thirty and seven-fifteen. If, encouraged by such a reform, the remaining Houses add the high table to their weekly dinners, they may well follow the model of Lowell, where the tutors and their guests eat apart from the rest. A high table for all the Houses, which does not disrupt normal eating, should enough improve the socio-intellectual life of each to satisfy the supporters of culture through cuisine.