In yesterday's issue it was suggested that no good would be accomplished by declining to look upon all sides of the Memorial Hall question. Students ought to be willing to recognize the reasons for the Corporation's attitude, and the Corporation ought to be willing to do the same by the students. Cooperation is necessary, and cooperation, underlaid with misunderstandings, will amount to nothing.
The Corporation is not disposed to undertake the erection and supervision of another dining-hall. The reasons for this we give substantially as they have been stated to us by one of the members. In the first place, they point out that no satisfactory method has yet been found for conducting the existing hall. The general table system is not a success, and students stoutly combat any plan which looks to an extension of this system. Any considerable permanent addition to the number of men at club tables is also opposed and there seems to be a strong desire for a return to club tables, with one man to one seat throughout the hall. This latter arrangement the Corporation itself does not favor, on the ground that it is a needless limitation of accommodations.
In the second place they show that if there should be simply one man to a seat throughout the hall, only about seven hundred and fifty men could then be accommodated. Now there are in Memorial at present over eleven hundred men, and over a hundred names are on the waitinglist. If it is considered also that the number of applicants is sure to grow with every year, it seems highly probable that, a year from this coming fall, the number of men who will desire Memorial Hall board or its equivalent will not be less than fifteen hundred. If then the number in Memorial should be reduced to seven hundred and fifty, a second hall of the same size would simply take care of the overflow existing at that time, and any further growth in the University would immediately bring up the question of a third hall. That is to say, the Corporation holds that, unless the students are willing that the number at Memorial should be made fairly large, a second hall would not settle matters for any length of time at all.
The members of the Corporation further state that the business already carried on by them is tremendous, and that to furnish board to students is a complicated matter under the most favorable circumstances. Since therefore it is not plain on what basis the new hall could be organized, and since the question seems in reality to be not of a second hall but of a number of halls limited only by the growth of the University, the Corporation is inclined to stop where it is and let the problem be solved by recourse to private enterprise.
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