libraries are ill housed, and the Brander Matthews Dramatic Museum requires and deserves much better and more commodious quarters than it now has. The Department has recently made formal application for the erection of a building for its use similar in size to Philosophy or Avery Hall. A still larger building would be needed if it were to contain provision for such a theatre as the Department would greatly like to have in order to promote the excellent and effective work being done in dramatic composition and production.

The various engineering departments, which statedly carry on various forms of testing and experimental work, have made careful plans for a series of engineering testing laboratories. It is not proposed that these should be erected on the Quadrangle or the Green, but on cheaper ground away from Morningside Heights and convenient for transportation both by rail and by water. Conferences are going forward concerning these testing and experimental laboratories, and it is probable that some specific recommendations will be ready for consideration before the close of the present academic

year.

It must be borne in mind that, were all these buildings to be quickly completed and equipped, they would do no more than make provision for work that has long been in progress. They constitute only such a body as the soul and spirit of the University of to-day ought to have for their greatest effectiveness and usefulness. The years pass and opportunity passes with them. It is imperative that this great building program be pressed unceasingly to full accomplishment.

The stupendous cost of caring properly for the work of Columbia University may be in some measure appreciated if the amount of money needed to erect and equip the buildings that have just been completed, or

are in process of construction, or are so urgently required, be set down:

Although Whittier Hall at Teachers College was ready for the occupancy of students as early as 1901, the present extensive and very satisfactory development of University residence halls dates from 1903, when the

University Residence

Halls

gift of Mrs. Helen Hartley Jenkins and Marcellus

Hartley Dodge made possible the building of Hartley Hall and stimulated the building of Livingston Hall. Brooks Hall at Barnard College followed in 1907, and Furnald Hall was built in 1913. Meanwhile, the development of residence halls at Teachers College has included the purchase and use of Bancroft and Seth Low Halls, while Johnson Hall, the new University residence hall especially designed for women graduate and professional students, will be ready for use in a few weeks.

There is sometimes misapprehension as to the part which these residence halls play in the life of the University, and this misapprehension it is desirable to dispel. Residence halls are as much a part of the University's educational equipment as are libraries, laboratories, and lecture-rooms: They are built and maintained primarily for educational purposes and for their educational influence. They are not built and maintained primarily as income-producing investments of University funds. The fact that residence halls can be, and often are, so administered as to bring a reasonable return upon the funds used in their erection and equipment, is an incident—a fortunate incident, to be sure-but still an incident and in no wise an essential. Until recent years there was no thought that a college or university residence hall should be expected to pay an ordinary investment return upon its cost. At Oxford or Cambridge such a notion would excite a smile. In fact, it is not so very long ago that a prevailing custom in American school and college life was to fix an inclusive fee for instruction and room, in which case it became a mere matter of bookkeeping as to whether or not the residence hall or dormitory paid a return upon its cost. A university residence hall is neither a rabbit warren, a barracks, nor a boarding-house. It is a center of college and university life and influence, where no inconsidera

ble part of the student's education is to be gained by contact with fellow-students and where he contributes to and shares in that college life and college spirit which, however elusive and difficult to define, are powerful factors in fashioning the mind and character of the American college student. Whenever a college or university loses sight of this fundamental fact and emphasizes unduly the element of financial return, it jeopardizes the whole undertaking. Such a policy might easily turn the residence halls from an influence for good into an influence for harm or danger. In this world, and more especially in universities, there are two contrasted ways of doing things. They may be done cheaply, which is always the most expensive and the most wasteful way; or they may be done right, which is always the most economical and the most businesslike way.

Three primary considerations in college and university administration are provisions for the health, the housing, and the instruction of the student body. Columbia University has in recent years made literally stupendous progress in all of these directions. It is satisfying and most significant to have the University Medical Officer report that the general health of those students who live in residence halls is noticeably better than that of those who live elsewhere. This of itself is an argument for the steady building of residence halls so long as there are students waiting to occupy them. A residence hall is, among other things, a place where good manners may be formed and strengthened. In personal bearing and habits of speech and of conduct, good examples exert a steady, if often unconscious, influence for the improvement of the bearing, the speech and the conduct of others. The comfortable and attractive provisions which the residence halls make for the social life of students living