Education: Abolish Roommates

Prof. Samuel Eliot Morison, of Harvard’s history department has been writing perspective impressions of Harvard for the Harvard Alumni Bulletin after three years (1922-25) as Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University. An impression recently published beneath the terse statement which U. S. graduates and undergraduates instantly discerned a deep vein of truth, was to the effect that at Oxford college studies are called “reading” while in the U. S. reading is called “work.” “If any material device could help matters it would be the abolition of roommates. At Oxford, only Americans and foreigners can be induced to share rooms. . . . The Oxonian reads alone in his study and freely discusses intellectual problems with his fellows. The Harvard man of today can find refuge from telephone, roommates and callers only in the Widener Library. He seldom discusses his reading with anyone and too often reads with the spirit of a clock-watching clerk—so many pages or chapters to be got through.”