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OUTSIDE LOOKING IN

Students in the Harvard Engineering School are not to be allowed to apply for the first two units of the House Plan. Whether, in time, this group will be included, or whether separate quarters will be provided for it is still in doubt. But before the problem of the disposal of these some 200 students is finally solved, it is necessary to note both the lack of fairness and the lack of wisdom in separating the Engineering School from the remainder of the College.

Until the present no distinction other than academic has been made between Engineering and College undergraduates. All the traditions of Harvard rise in protest against such a division, a separation on the basis of vocation rather than of natural affinities. At present, as far as can be learned, the majority of Engineering School students room with men in the College. It is imperative that these be not still further excluded from this valuable series of contacts outside the scientific laboratory merely by their choice of profession.

The Engineering School lacks the tutorial system, and the argument is raised that, as this system is one of the features of the House Plan, the engineers will have no place in the new units. But for have no place in the new units. But for this very reason it is all the more vital for the future bachelors of science to live under the cultural atmosphere and have the benefit of the social aspects of the House idea. The engineering students are too small in number to form an adequate group for themselves, all the more so since they have but a single scholastic aim. They are not yet graduate students. It is only just and reasonable to allow them to retain at least some of the advantages of college life.

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