[We invite all men in the University to submit communications on subjects of timely interest. The CRIMSON is not, however, responsible for the sentiments expressed in such communications as may be printed.]

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I read with some interest your editorial of April 1, in which apropos of the suggestion made at Yale to eliminate the private dormitory system, you advocate changes in our dormitory system as a remedy for some of Harvard's social conditions.

I thoroughly agree that "if we are to face our dormitory situation manfully we must prepare to take heroic measures." If matters are wrong now because of it it is probable that they will be still further wrong with each year in which we hesitate and temporize. The dormitory situation must be met manfully. But let us first come to a very candid understanding as to what the "dormitory situation" is; and as we have all spent some time at Cambridge and have a common foundation of data obtained from experience and personal contact, let us not befog the discussion with too much preliminary analysis of classes, clubs and athletics and other elements that are interwoven in the sum total of elements which go to make Harvard's world; and let us not introduce into this discussion any hasty argument on the qualifications which of course exist upon every general statement that may be made. If we are to be heroic, we must, first of all be frank.

The dormitory situation may, it seems to me, be described best in terms of its immediate result. It throws Harvard undergraduates at the beginning of their life in Cambridge into social groups according to their money, and is a dominant factor toward preserving those groups. That is un-American, and it is against, the best university spirit. There is constantly at work in the mind of nearly every undergraduate a more or less definite desire, bred in the course of his general intellectual development, to become more catholic in his sympathies and thought. It is part of his natural growth and a university should help him in it; if it fails to help him fully in that then perhaps it would have been better for the American community if he had gone into business life from his preparatory school. It is this desire for a broadening of the horizon of sympathies, for contact between northerner, southerner, easterner and westerner, for contact between men of ideas, based upon different beliefs, traditions and trainings that is awake in every undergraduate, who is maturing as a university should mature a man. In the various activities in the University, in which men are gathered from all corners of college life in pursuit of some common object, the permanent good that results from a university standpoint is little unless they have led to an interchange of ideas and sympathies between the individuals who take part. A university, and especially a university in a republic should be for its undergraduate students a clearing house of ideas and ideals. Natural personal intercourse is the first requisite for this. If Harvard University is to continue to exercise the leading university influence in America she must always be national, national not only with regard to geographical constituency, but national in the catholicity of thought which can come only from free play among undergraduates of the widely divergent shades of opinion resulting from the greatly varied influences of their earlier environment and trainings.

I think most of us will agree that we have felt the great shortcomings of Harvard social life in this respect, and while we have believed that it is impossible ever to arrive at any ideal state we have still been of the opinion that there are many inherent obstacles to the right sort of intercourse which are capable of eradication. I remember how we set going Freshmen receptions some years ago, and how we welcomed Mr. Higginson's gift of the Union as tending to remove these obstacles. These things like the special efforts now being made for frequent smokers and other large informal gatherings are evidences of the general feeling that has existed for a long time, and are worthy attempts. But they do not go to the root of the difficulty, and it is the conviction that they do not go to the root of the difficulty, and it is the conviction that they do not which has prompted you to say in your editorial that there is a "dormitory situation." But I submit that your view, that the Corporation build in the Yard an expensive dormitory of modern construction and conveniences, does not begin to meet the evil squarely; and the evil must be met squarely, even at a great sacrifice. A remedy that would go to the root of the difficulty would be one which would destroy that condition of affairs under which men are accidentally thrown 'into personal contact at the outset of their college life almost entirely, so far as concerns the formation of new personal ties, upon the general basis of their comparative money allowances. I believe that Harvard should take heroic measures to end the unfortunate situation by which walls of inertia are built upon untrue foundations between groups of men in the same University. The only effective cure would be to have all dormitories in Cambridge equipped and managed in such a way, that the standard of dormitory living and the rentals shall not greatly vary in any of the buildings. This would have to be done either through sole ownership of all dormitories by the Corporation, or through some other mode of control, but preferably through ownership. It would necessitate a great financial outlay and a large special endowment for the Corporation to carry out the work of re-organization, to bring its present dormitories up to a reasonable standard of modern comfort, and then to be enabled to rent at reasonable rates; and it would prevent a part of the coming Harvard generations from living up to the degree of luxury which their purses could afford, but it would insure for all time a finer undergraduate life at Harvard.  "1902.