When Leverett House bought a television set this year, the House committee placed the receiver in a special video room, leaving the Common Room free for the old fashioned student who liked to talk to his friends or read a magazine after dinner.
To a great extent, this typifies all activities in Leverett. For although Leverett's functions are impressive and varied, the individual student who wants no part of them is left to his own devices. Almost never does a House activity or organization intrude on an individual's privacy. Never is a student compelled, by social pressure or otherwise, to do or die for he glory of the Bunny hutch.
Sense of Solidarity
And yet, "house spirit" blazes heartily at Leverett. There is an amazing sense of solidarity and drive among those who play on House teams, arrange the House forums and concentration dinners, and devote hours of precious study time to such projects as painting and decorating the television room or equipping the new House darkroom.
The concentration dinner, now popular in almost every other House, was a Leverett invention. This year the House went further along that line with a Sophomore Class dinner early in the fall. Leverett also devised the entry beer parties, held several times a year.
More than 100 members of the Class of '53 will set up housekeeping in Leverett next fall. Ninety-four of those, Housemaster Leigh Hoadley reports, will move into suites that will be completely vacated by Juno graduation. This offers an excellent chance for men who want to room together to find what they want.
The vacant suites which will be turned over to members of '53 cover the entire price range, and include doubles, triples and larger suites. Furthermore, there are several pairs of adjoining suites which will await sophomores moving down in large numbers who relish the idea of open fire-doors and communal living.
There are 341 residents of Leverett right now, and this number will be maintained next year. This figure is more than pre-war level, but the extra men are spaced evenly throughout the House so that no suite has more than one man over the number it was originally built to accommodate.
Small House
Despite the relatively small size of Leverett, an unusually large percentage of seniors graduating this term gives Leverett the third highest number of vacancies for the fall.
Leverett's physical attractions are many, it is the only House with its own tennis court, and of the Houses with a river view, Leverett is the closest to Lamont Library and many of the classroom.
Leverett this year finished second in fall sports in the Straus trophy competition. The House gridders and their touch football confreres both took second place, and Bunnies proved to be the champion cross-country runners.
Leverett's library is opulent in American literature and strong in other fields as well. Squash courts right on the Mather Hall courtyard, stall showers in half the rooms, and the famed trapeziform dining hall only begin to tell the story. Few Bunnies feel the absence of a tower.
For the musically minded, Leverett owns a piano practice room a record listening room, and an extensive record collection.
Leverett, incidentally, is the only House that maintains direct contact with its brother college at Yale. Regardless of the outcome of either intra-mural competition, Timothy Dwight and Leverett meet on the athletic fields several times a year.
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