One of the constantly recurring misapprehensions about the oncoming House Plan is the imagined havoc it will play on the corporate spirit of Yale. Undergraduates and alumni alike have conjured up all sorts of dire pictures of the ensuing conditions here five or ten years hence. They have visualized conditions ranging from the prospect of sending their sons to Summer House rather than Yale to the spectacle of Yale beset with a conglomeration of small social entities.

The trend of opinion expressed in regard to the relation of the class to the residential hall has been shared by us, namely, that class unity and spirit will acquire renewed strength only through single classes comprising hall memberships, and not representatives of four. Our feeling on this subject has been based not so much on a fear that university representation in halls will be a divisive factor in the life of the College, as that the emasculating of the class as a fulcrum of government and social intercourse will disrupt a hallowed and highly admirable feature of our society.

On this score, we have stood for class and not university representation in the halls and not because other arrangements would be divisive factors in the life of the College. As the president of the Yale Club of New York has said, the day will in all probability never dawn when an undergraduate will feel inspired to lead a long cheer for John Smith quadrangle. It is highly doubtful if the residential halls will ever reach that stage of development, where they will overshadow the university which gives birth to them.

Tradition will undoubtedly look askance when the first of these halls becomes a reality of brick and mortar, but then tradition has looked askance at bigger transformations in the past, where results have been as wholesome as it is expected this panacea will be. Certainly Yale will never again be subjected to the division which took place with the formation of the Scientific School as a separate school, and certainly Yale has not been extremely conscious that their separation has been an aggravating divisive factor. Initial pride in both the College and Sheff, still centers around the word "Yale," and the old succession of affections--university, class, society--still holds. There is no reason to believe, therefore, that the residential halls will injure a tradition which has withstood greater changes before. Yale is too vital a being to entertain these thoughts as even remote contingencies. --Yale News