Transformational Education > New classrooms
A crowded family
Chester N. Greenough, dean of Harvard College, wrote a tart note to the Business School's Dean Donham in the fall of 1924:
"In a certain sense, the Business School is our guest: that is to say, we were here first; we have admitted it to University Hall, to the Library, and to some of our classrooms. It has grown astonishingly and has deserved to grow, for it has been served with great enthusiasm and its policy has been soundly devised and attractively made known to the public. Therefore we are now in the position of a crowded family in a small house. It is emphatically the duty of the College, as the older branch of the family, to be hospitable, or at least decently courteous, under physical arrangements which are as inconvenient to you as they are to us."
Other Harvard faculty members were more blunt. The dean of the School of Engineering, for example, repeatedly objected to the inclination of Business School students to smoke in his school's hallways. Divinity School Professor Kirsopp Lake complained directly to Dean Donham about Business School students and their deportment: "Might I ask you to tell the [Lumbering] class which was occupying Room B in Widener at twelve o'clock today, Wednesday, that when they have taken a room by mistake or have occupied it past the hour without noticing it, they ought to clear out and excuse themselves rather than laugh and almost jeer at the unfortunate instructor who comes to take possession?"