One out of every seven Freshmen will bed down in the Indoor Athletic Building gym for as long as two and a half weeks.

About 200 of the estimated 1325 underclassmen registering today will receive an unexpected dose of last year's barracks-type accommodations, Associate Dean Robert B. Watson '37 announced yesterday.

The housing dilemma, supposedly solved by careful preparations last spring, was caused, Watson said, by:

Draft Falls

1) failure of the peace-time draft to call up the extra men admitted late last spring to keep the Class of '52 at a normal level;

2) abolition of the "forced commuting," which has affected all students living within a 45-minute radius of the Square for the past two years;

3) graduation of many married students who found their own homes in the University community.

Both the commuting and married-student changes were anticipated in the overall housing picture, Watson explained, but the extra Freshmen now make both factors vital inasmuch as their rooms would, in the past two years, have been available for the overflow newcomers.

The conversion of the Blockhouse basketball gym on the fourth floor however, will not be so chaotic as last year, Watson said.

"We have a little more time this year and are profiting by our mistakes," he admitted. "We have been aided by recommendations from last year's temporary tenants as well as from the Student Council-CRIMSON investigation. It should be a much more comfortable place to live."

Changes include the type of beds, barracks-living regulations and study facilities.

Very few of the 200 Freshmen who will sleep in the gym tonight will be there the full two and a half weeks estimated as the length of time needed to find regular College accommodations for the surplus men.

"As vacancies turn up in the Yard or possibly outside dormitories such as Claverly, Apley Court and Dudley, we shall choose by lot who will get them." Freshman Dean Dan R. Fenn '44 explained. "Assignments will definitely not be made wholesale, but only as the va- cancies trickle in."

Fenn also emphasized that the "gym-dwellers" are not victims of persecution.

According to customary procedure, he said, combinations of roommates were arranged for the Yard and then the deans drew lots for the rooms. "The men living in the gym," Fenn said, "are those whose names were drawn last--just a matter of luck and nothing else."