Among the primary concerns of the Student Council is to pressure the Administration into building a student activities center. Arguing that the present Dunster Street center is delapidated and too small, the Council concludes that the solution is a shiny new structure, with offices for all and a secretary wherever possible.

Granted that the Dunster Street building is everything the Council says, it does not follow by any logical leap that the University must construct a new center for the ever-growing legion of organizations. Instead, the Administration should strongly resist any pressure for such a building and seriously consider the possibility of placing club offices within the Houses.

Money speaks loudest and first, and a new center to accommodate every undergraduate organization would require both large initial expenditures and substantial maintenance costs. The Student Council is not lobbying for a quonset hut; it desires a structure to rival Massachusetts and University Halls, not to mention Burr or Lamont. The building would be imposing, and the bill would be no small part of the conspicious consumption.

But even if the University did not desperately need $100 million for new buildings--such as Houses, departmental offices, and a health center--and even if land in Cambridge could be had by preemption, there would be no reason to build a student activities center. Presuming the University had money to give away, it should give none to build a monument to extra-curricular bureaucracy and centralization.

A new, inclusive center would, moreover, probably lead to the Student Council's occupying the executive suite. As a sounding board for student opinion and a research organization, the Council performs a useful function. As the commandant of a "center," the Council would injure the free-workings of every organization which came within intercommunicating range of the president. Whether or not the present Council considers this desirable, the good possibility remains that a new concrete center might prove a vault for healty undergraduate activities.

Even more important than present dangers is the future of a House system which will in no way grows larger and more impersonal, and as the benefit from a college-wide center. As Harvard walls of college cohesion crumble into spheres of influence, the House must play an increased role as the focus of student activity. If Houses are to realize their full potential, the presence of college-wide social and organizational ganglions must be kept to a minimum. Otherwise, University associations wil grow into centers of prestige and activity, while Houses wither to sleeping quarters for the active and apartments for the non-doers.

Contrary to what the Council advocates, college activity should be placed in the Houses by making each a "center" of student organizations. Those organizations which cannot now squeeze into Dunster Street should, wherever possible, be given an office in one of the seven Houses. And when new Houses are built and overcrowding is alleviated, the Administration might well consider moving those groups now in the Dunster Street building into the Houses.

By setting aside a few rooms in each House for organizations, the University could eliminate the dangers of bureaucratic centralization, and, at the same time, tend to make Houses the focus of undergraduate activity. Instead of going from Lowell House to the Activities Center, the student would remain in his own House or travel to one of the neighboring Houses.

The possible danger in such a plan is that a particular House, over a period of time, might build up a reputation as the stronghold for Democrats, or mountain climbers, or bridge players. For a certain House to be known for a particular activity would not be necessarily indesirable, but the situation could become extreme. A simple remedy of rotating the various organizations' offices, however, would effectively solve the problem of ingrained stereotypes.

The Council is correct in advocating office space for all organizations which desire it. But this space should be in the Houses, thus fulfilling a present need, while strengthening the 25-year old House system against the growing pains of a future Harvard.