Lashed to a froth by the baleful cries of ticket-hungry students, the Inter-House Dance Committee is hopefully exploring every rabbit hutch for a possible solution to the frustrating shortage of space for the Yale weekend dances. But their mightiest efforts have been snarled in the sticky web of a divided and slow University Hall chain of command that hampers a real desire for cooperation and threatens to taint the weekends of many date-laden, but ticketless students.
Although 2200 students can be accommodated at the previously scheduled dances and in the newly available Union Common Rooms, the popularity of the first big post-war weekend has far outstripped the estimates of needed space. An unexpected demand for 500 additional tickets has forced the long suffering committee into a snipe hunt for new halls.
The spacious Union Dining Hall, considered as a sure cure for tickets demands, is protected by such a welter of transformation difficulties that both Union officials and University Hall judge its use impractical. Possible damage to the newly varnished floors, the difficulty of restoring the tables for the next day's meals, and the scarcity of employees to complete the post-dance work all conspire to defeat the cause of the dance committee. Of the two remaining possibilities, Memorial Hall and the Indoor Athletic Building, Men Hall is already occupied by the Law School dance and the gym is committed to quartering the Yale students.
Blocked in their race for new facilities, the dance committee has tried to reopen Winthrop and Eliot Houses on Saturday night. Since all the Houses are under the jurisdiction of their individual masters, the Dean's Office is impotent and can only act as mediator between the committee and the masters, whose fear of rowdiness coupled with a reluctance to stage more than two big dances each term has made them cool towards the advances of the students.
As the result of an almost impregnable separation of authority, the predicament of the Dance Committee in its search for additional space will remain insoluble without prompt aid from the House masters. The weekends of five hundred students stand in jeopardy unless the masters of Winthrop and Eliot Houses speedily set aside their fears and come to the rescue of a clamoring student body.
