Parietal Pettifogging

Tonight the Faculty Committee on Houses, which includes the seven Housemasters, will meet to consider the important and controversial issue of House deans. The Housemasters will also have before them at the same time a relatively unimportant petition asking for liberalization of parietal rules to allow students to entertain women in their rooms until 11 p.m. on weekend nights.

But the very unimportance of this petition is what makes it so desirable that it be acted upon at this meeting, or as soon as possible. The Housemasters have periodically considered this liberalization of parietal rules over the past few years, and have just as periodically deferred action or quashed the issue altogether.

It is not necessary for us to go once more into the reasons for considering a change in parietal rules desirable. By now, the Housemasters themselves should know those reasons by heart, even though they have so far refused to act on that knowledge. And it would be impossible for us to list the rational arguments that have been put forward against the proposal, for indeed there are none. All the opposition arguments that we have heard can be summed up in one word: "No" Whether this "No" is the product of unjustified concern for unenforceable morality, or whether it is a vestigial remain of an unenlightened nineteenth century conservatism, is of little importance. What is important is that it exists, and that it is an anomaly in the relatively enlightened social atmosphere of today.

Even Yale, which, as the Housemasters may recall, was founded in protest against the liberalism of Harvard, has now adopted the 11 p.m. deadline and seems to be happy with it. This is, of course, not a rational argument, but if the discussion is, as before, to be carried out on an emotional level, then the desire to stay ahead of Yale should be a clinching argument for the affirmative.