Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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Spring termis end-the last days of college and civilian life. Spring term,s beginningaquickest registration Mem Hall ever saw. The new' Graduate Center, besides stirring the aesthetic sensibilities of many, set off a contro- versy about parietal rules. The rules for the Graduate Center held that men could entertain women in their rooms until midnight i1 a.m. on weekendsi but that there had to be at least two women in each party. Most graduate students found this rule ridiculous and in no time at all one enterprising man founded a ciCoupIe-Sitting Service,7 which offered Radcliffe girls as third par- ties, at the regular baby-sitting rates, provided only that there was enough light in the room to study by. The project had its charms--the promoter sug- gested, for example, that a man could hire two couple-sitters and take his choiceebut it was soon scotched, as the rule was rescinded. Word of the Grad Center parietal rules soon reached the College and inspired a different and stronger reaction. After a brief snort at the idiocy of requiring an extra girl, undergraduates soon jumped to the more important issue: graduates were being allowed five more hours of grace. The Crimson, ever alert for traces of paternalism in Administration rulings, Hung itself into battle. Were graduate students five hours more mature than undergraduates, it asked? And did it matter, in the eyes of public opinion, whether a stream

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ramps, and other modernislic devices made the Center a tourisfs paradise. What drew the most attention for a time, was a large green mural of no, or at best, hidden meaning. A contest was held to give the thing a suitable name; but named or nameless, it took a lot of getting accustomed to. The mural, however, was shoved into the back- ground by the arrival of an even stranger monster over Christmas vacation,Athe nWorld Tree? This was its omcial name, but its spindly, stainless steel shafts reaching in all directions, made it look very much like at Sears and Roebuck clothes drier. Comment ranged from a nervous raucousness to a charming poem by a grad student, T. A. Lehrer: New Lecture Hnll saw everything-from lhe March of Time makers . . . . . . to Carl Sandburg I think that I shall never see A poem weird as a world-tree A tree to brighten every meal With fragrant boughs of stainless steel A tree that may in winter grace A skating rink around its base A tree Whose stark and spiked busem Will scare the birdies, hand confusemL That needs not rain, nor sun to rise, That needs but love, and Simoniz Of all the thoughts of Mr. Gropius This cosmic hatrack is the dopius.

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Geologisls in the woods. of women emerged at midnight from the Graduate Center or from Lowell House? Two days after this outburst a committee of House chairmen re- quested the Housemasters to extend parietal hours 011 the Dartmouth and Yale weekends. Two days after this a petition for midnight permissions every weekend Was set afoot in the Houses. The sponsors of this petition, Leonard J. Friedman :51 and John M. Goldstone ,51, relied mainly on the more subtle argument that men denied the use of their own rooms for social purposes were forced to have recourse to the low, expensive, and inevitably de- bilitating dives of the metropolitan area. Their petition, backed by this reasoning and the signa- tures of over 2000 House members iover two thirdsi, was presented to the Housemasters, met one day in august session. As was expected, noth- ing further happened, and the issue died quickly. Changes are not often made in parietal rules; and the more concerted the campaign put on by the undergraduates the more lecherous they look. Restraint and more than the utmost in decorum is required, and of course no one is inclined to listen to decorous whispers. The parking problem was iisolvedi9 once again, eveh before men had returned from summer vaca- tions. This year the motif was to be close cooper-