When the University reached into the depths of its corporate pocket and brought forth a $3000 loan for the new cooperative dining hall, it not only rescued a praiseworthy venture from the brink of failure but also established an excellent precedent for the handling of future student enterprise.

For several moths a small group of men and women drawn from the college, from the graduate schools, and from Radcliffe, have quietly been working as hard as any other comparable group in the University. Obstacles in the way of the projected cooperative often seemed insuperable. There was the food to be contracted for, the cooks to be hired, the legal status to be established, the money for furnishings to be raised, and above all, the housing to be provided. In comparison to the housing all other problems were easy; the scarcity of available halls--and the rents charged for them--were appalling. Then, after weeks of search, when a satisfactory location had finally been found and the lease was about to be signed, the Cambridge Savings Bank, for no apparent reason, suddenly backed down. Possibly local restaurant interests were not unconnected with this decision.

Here, when many months of work were about to go to naught, the University stepped in. After recanvassing the real estate agencies and finding that even Harvard University could not rent a dining hall near the Square, they began to look nearer home. Under their very eyes they found what weeks of search had failed to produce; and if one is inclined to wonder why the basement of Andover Hall was such an elusive-prize, only praise can be offered for the way in which the whole matter was finally concluded.

But it is not so much for the gift of a convenient room, for the generous loan, or even for the fact that they have made possible a graduate dining hall, that the University deserves the highest praise. Rather it is because they have recognized and rewarded the students whose courage and perseverance so fully deserved success. Harvard men with similar ideas and the will to succeed will be grateful for the precedent thus established.