Dining Officials Bar Lunch at Harkness For Undergraduates

Overcrowding, operating expenses, and a coming survey of traffic in House dining halls have compelled the University to enforce suddenly a dead-letter regulation forbidding undergraduates to eat lunch at Harkness Commons.

About 40 College students with after-noon labs in the graduate quadrangle have been using Harkness for convenience. They were told yesterday, when they attempted to enter, that they must dine at their own Houses or not at all.

Dining hall officials, according to Arthur D. Trottenberg '48, Manager of Operating Services, feel that undergraduate patronage might add to the present crowding caused by recent revisions in the Commons serving system. The cost of meals per student in the House dining halls, moreover, is raised when there are fewer students eating lunch there.

According to Carle T. Tucker, Director of the Dining Hall Department, officials began to become concerned with the large increase in College use of Harkness after an incident last week during which an undergraduate "overturned a relish dish"--apparently in protest against the rule of no second helpings.

The rule banning inter-House lunch at Harkness has been in effect since 1951, but College students have had de facto permission to eat there in previous years.