Housemasters Reaffirm Saturday Parietal Slash

Fervent student appeals for reinstatement of the 11 p.m. parietal deadline on football Saturdays failed to move the housemasters last night as they unanimously reaffirmed their agreement of last year on an 8 p.m. limit.

The only revision in the ruling was the exemption of away-game Saturdays. Earlier expressions of the regulation mentioned an 8 p.m. deadline "during the football season." The masters also approved their companion ruling of last winter which set the parietal deadline in any one House at the time a dance began in that House. The 11 p.m. deadline will still hold in Houses in which there is no dance.

Petitions Unimpressive

Elliott Perkins '23, master of Lowell House and secretary of the housemasters, said the group had considered the petitions signed by more than 400 upperclassmen asking the masters to cancel last year's ruling, but had not found them very convincing. "You can always get somebody to sign a petition," Perkins said. "Furthermore, we have all talked to our resident tutors and many undergraduates, and found much approval of our ruling.

"Nothing presented to us," he went on, "was sufficient to make us alter our original position that big Saturdays--and football Saturdays are big Saturdays--should be pulled up at 8 p.m."

Perkins said no formal vote had been necessary because "we all agreed."

No Horse Trade, This

Asked whether the masters had considered the possibility of bringing back the 1 to 4 p.m. hours on weekday afternoons in exchange for the cuts in the Saturday night deadline, Perkins said, "We never thought about it because we never considered this a horse trade in the first place. We had always disapproved of the afternoon hours and when the Council opened the issue last year we took that opportunity to do away with them. It was not a trade."

The cut in the afternoon hours and the extension in Saturday hours to 11 p.m. were made simultaneously by the faculty last December. At that time the faculty gave the housemasters almost unlimited authority to change the hours.