UNDERGRADUATES' ROOMS.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPEOTATOR.1 am not surprised that "An American Mother," writing in a recent number of the Times, is disgusted with the ahabbi. ness of undergraduates' rooms. If she would go farther than the furniture and decoration, she would be wise. Let her have the ventilation and the sanitary arrangements of the lodging-house rooms and of College rooms tested by a com- petent medical man or sanitary engineer, and she will often be astonished. I have known many cases of illness arise from their deplorable condition. In these matters, as in others, dons "are as children." Many College staircases have w.c.'s in the basement. The fact is often obvious on entering the staircase. Their drain-traps are often inefficient, and their window ventilation quite inadequate. The foul air ascends the staircase; the staircase windows seldom open. There may be four floors, and in the roof of the fourth floor there is no attempt at a ventilator, and the window, if there is one, is shut. The result is that the men in the upper rooms live in that foul air, for it is only through their rooms that there is any draught or escape for it. They live and sleep in the only ventilating shaft from the basement rooms and staircase below. I have known constant headaches, sore throats, with ear disease and deafness, caused thereby. I dare say the soil is prepared for the seed of tuberculosis that wrecks their careers later on. Again, most sets of rooms have a pantry, or "scout-hole," or "gyp-room," as it is called. In this pantry is a sink, and the escape-pipe of this sink, which is perilously near the bedroom door sometimes, is not always properly dis. connected from the foul-smelling drain or sewer. Hence— disaster, as I have seen. Again, the bedrooms are sometimes very small. I could show a few in Oxford, in the best Colleges too, so small that there is not room for a sponge. bath. I remember some in Cambridge, many, without any fire- place. I can show one in Oxford without any window, or rather with a small window opening only on a passage or " scout- hole." I can show many, damp and musty smelling, where no ray of sunshine has ever entered, and where the walls are an inch thick with layer upon layer of wall-paper some hundred yea, a old, with all its dust and germs and damp. Such rooms would be condemned by his Majesty's inspectors of lunatic asylums or workhouses. Why put our sons in them at the most tender and susceptible age of their lives ? Fathers, mothers, tutors, bursars, public health officers, see to it, step it, combine and condemn the rooms ! In many cues the living rooms are spacious, and indeed beautiful, and the bed- rooms had in every way. Why let a boy .spend ten or twelve hours of the twenty-four in a horridly insanitary
hole, not
large enough to have a sponge-bath in, when he has a ilice large room in which often he does not spend four hours a dal unless he reads ? Why not make him sleep in the big room with fireplace and adequate window ventilation ? All those who are in charge of undergraduates should undergo. two or three months' residence in an open - air sanatorium.
then we should see fewer undergraduates in those sana- toriums trying to regain their lost health. Who are the inspectors of lodging-houses ? Are they medical men, specially trained, holding, it may be, the D.P.H., the Diploma of Public Health, given at Cambridge, and with an up-to-date knowledge of sanatoriums and hospitals ? No, Sir, they are not. They are young men, fair classical scholars, or mediocre mathematicians, first-class men in "Mode." or "Greats." But there is nothing more in common between their special knowledge and the special knowledge required for their work than there is "between four pounds of butter and four o'clock !" The lodging-houses may be inspected by the medical officer of health. But the Colleges are not. Why not? Some Colleges, I know, both at Oxford and Cambridge, have done much to improve matters. They have "waked up." But the majority have not. A great many—too many—men break down in health during their undergraduate career or soon after. It is, I fear, in some cases due to the damp, dark, ill-ventilated, unsanitary bedrooms in which they have to spend their time. Let College tutors see to it They have a tremendous responsibility. They are in loco parent mm. But when I send my son to Oxford or Cambridge I shall not trust the tutors in this matter, nor even myself; but I will only let my son live in rooms that have been tested and passed by a competent medical specialist and a skilled sanitary engineer.
[We are strongly against luxurious rooms, or even smart rooms, and have no objection to common papers and cheap rugs, but the need for proper drains and plenty of fresh air is imperative, and we fear, with our correspondent, that the undergraduate's sleeping place when "in College" is too often a stuffy crib rather than an airy bedroom.—En. Spectator.]
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