When the facts finally came out, as the 1953 season rolled around, undergraduates were shocked. On September 26 three Masters admitted that they "favored" cutting the Saturday curfew to 8 p.m. during the football season. By the next day, a newly-formed Student Parietal Rules Committee had collected 300 fervent signatures on a petition urging the Masters not to do this. On September 29, however, the Masters admitted that they had actually decided to do it early the preceding spring, but had not mentioned the decision to a soul. The secrecy was a complete oversight, claimed Master Perkins: "We were crossing our bridges when we came to them, although looking back on it, it might have been handier to say something about it at the time." Finally, on October 1, the Masters met, and turned down student appeals with a curt "You can always get somebody to sign a petition." Once again they decided--this time openly--to enforce an 8 p.m. Saturday deadline during the football season. They did make one concession, however, in exempting away game weekends from the new ruling. Yet students were hardly satisfied. A CRIMSON editorial spoke of "seven horse traders" who "by promising anything ... and never paying, reaped great profits from un-suspecting children and old women." The Masters may have laughed, but they certainly did not change their minds.

Behind all the entertaining verbiage there were--and still are--a number of solid arguments on either side of the curfew issue for home football Saturdays.

Masters contend that a student would be more likely to crack up his automobile while driving his date back to Wellesley after an evening of drinking in his room. Students counter by showing how seldom this happens after the 11 o'clock deadline on non-football weekends.

Revived Hopes

Persuasive as both arguments may seem, however, neither side has persuaded the other during the past two years. The Masters, once the petitions were dead and the present parietal rules established, were delighted to stick with the status quo. (The Houses now are idyllically masculine at 2 p.m. on weekdays, and House dances on home football weekends are inhumanly mobbed--at a fine profit for the House committees). Meanwhile, two classes of undergraduates have left the College since parietal rules were last an issue, and by the time today's juniors and seniors have graduated no student will ever think that the hours of 4 to 7 p.m. on weekdays and 1 to 8 p.m. on home football Saturdays are not sacrosanct. The Masters can hardly wait.

But this fall somebody threw a rock into the pool of parietal apathy. Thomas M. Lowes '56, realizing that his class is the last to remember "the good old days of 1 to 4 p.m. parietal hours," decided that he would try to get these hours back in the interest of "leaving something of value to undergraduates." Last month be circulated a petition urging the Faculty to reinstate these early afternoon hours. The appeal, which quickly gained the signatures of 1100 upperclassmen and the endorsement of the Student Council, is now before the Masters, who will discuss it Tuesday and then make a recommendation to the Administrative Board.

In the eyes of the Masters, however, the College is now in more danger than ever before of creeping feminism. The idea of ladies visiting in the Houses at 1 p.m., and thereby intruding on the rightful order of the day's activities "in the grown-up world", is still abhorrent to them. There is not the slightest chance, therefore, that either the Masters or the Administrative Board will approve the current plea for the 1 to 4 p.m. weekdays hours. In fact, the 1100-odd names backing the appeal may not even convince the Masters that the issue is worthy of serious consideration. This is, after all, just another in a long line of capricious student petitions. As Master Perkins remarked: "I might have signed it myself if I'd been in the dining room at the time.