But these apartments can only accommodate one-seventh of the demand. The remainder of the married graduate students is forced to devise expedients. Everybody finds something. Some live in trailers; others take big apartments and rent rooms. Often, two couples share a small apartment while they wait for an opening at the Housing Trust. The length of time on the waiting list is largely a matter of luck. For some, it is a matter of two or three weeks; others wait months in cramped quarters. Mrs. F. K. Patterson, assistant director of the Harvard Wives, says that married students are generally "good sports about the type of place they have to live in." A large majority of them have children; these usually stay put once they find a a place.
For those who are lucky enough to get into Holden Green or Shaler Lane, the wait is worthwhile. Reasonable rent, clean paint, and a five-minute bicycle ride ("with practice," one student asserted) are the rewards. For those who obtain private rentals through the Housing Trust, the results are not quite so fortunate.
These students are forced to find ways of meeting a higher rent. The most common method is for the wife to work. Typing and babysitting are favorite occupations. The advantage of typing research papers is that the wife can do it in her own home, and at the same time mind her children. Babysitting offers a similar inducements and a frequent form of this is taking care of another family's children on weekends.
Need can force some more extreme measures. Many do without a telephone because they cannot pay the bill. One wife, in order to buy a washing machine which would enable her to take in laundry, needed $50 in advance. Four Harvard undergraduates agreed to advance her the money on the condition that she clean their dirty linen for the entire year. A contract was signed.
Besides being a rather trying experience for many young mothers, the necessity to work leaves them in an isolateed social world. For these, Harvard's advantages are not within easy reach. Concerts, lectures and exhibitions are too time-consuming for a combination housewife-mother-laundress.
Lease System
Financial difficulties are further aggravated by the prevalent lease system. Under this setup, rooms are rented for a full year beginning in September. The student must therefore pay for his apartment even if he does not use it in the summer; this constitutes a serious drain on his resources. Summer sublets almost always entail a loss, since the supply in a college community far exceeds the off-season demand. This enhances the attractiveness of such a location as Revere--a resort area--where a profitable sublease is relatively easy to acquire.
But budgetary considerations are not the only ones forcing married students away from Cambridge. More suburban areas offer, many parents feel, two clear--cut advantages: better play areas and better schools for their children.
The big lure of a two-family house in Arlington is a yard for the children. Exerting a bigger influence upon parents, however, is the problem of the quality of Cambridge elementary schools.
Physical facilities of some of these schools--Agassiz and Peabody, for example--are more than adequate. The main complaints of these graduate students concern the calibre of teaching. "What can you expect when appointments are made arbitrarily instead of by merit?" one father in GSAS demanded.
Because these parents in most cases cannot afford to send their children to private institutions, they insist all the more upon a high standard for city-run schools; and many of them feel the Cambridge elementary school system to be subpar. Among those who remain in Cambridge, there is considerable resentment against the School Committee. One father of three children asserted that a majority of the Committee sent its children to private schools, because it knew the situation.
Judson T. Shaplin '42, associate dean of the Faculty of Education and a member of the School Committee, denies this. His own children attend the Peabody School, which he described as "more than adequate." Moreover, he said, many Harvard faculty members send their children to such neighborhood schools as Peabody, Russell and Agassiz.
"These graduate students," states Shaplin, "have a hypercritical attitude towards school. Most of them have gone through pretty rigorous educational competition, and they want to avoid this for their kids. There is a terrifically protective atmosphere in this regard, for they want their children to go to nothing but the best."
"Neighborhood schools," he adds, "are better than they are given credit for by the Cambridge climate of opinion. There are two ways in which the problem of the school problem can be met. By giving up--moving to Arlington, or by staying to fight. The schools here are good, and they can be tremendously improved through parent-teacher associations and political action."
The University can do little about the school problem. It is, however, attempting to alleviate housing conditions. Bring graduate students back into the Harvard community is considered so integral that it is a part of the Program for Harvard College. $7 million has been proposed for he construction of buildings housing approximately 400 families.
Although this number will not completely solve the graduate housing problem, it will make a sizeable dent in it. Moreover, the existence of so many good apartments will make the Cambridge landlord a little less cocky. Specific sites have not yet been chosen; in an official brochure, however, the Administration states that it "has in mind fairly high buildings with adequate play and parking spaces, near parks and good schools."
Concurrently, spokesman for Hunneman and Co., real estate agents for the University has suggested that single houses at Kirkland Place, Hubbard Park, Memorial Drive, now used for faculty residences, might be used to house married graduate students.
A long-term solution is definitely needed. It may be that the married graduate student is a postwar phenomenon; but statistics indicate that his number is increasing, and he is probably here to stay. The plight of the married student, if not desperate, is nonetheless increasingly uncomfortable.
Program plans insure that the situation is improving. This $7 million project represents the first step the Harvard Housing Trust has taken since its inception in 1925. Housing for married students must become better; for, as the woman in P. B. H. who represents the Trust says, "It can't get any worse."