To the Editor:

Noah Lawrence has had many good columns in recent months: last Monday’s might have been his best. His proposal (“Nearby HGS offers best location for new colleges” 11/5) not only sums up the problems Yale is facing but offers an inspired solution to them.

By transforming HGS into two residential colleges would Yale preserve the familial intimacy? Noah’s complementary proposal to move the central academic hub of graduate life to Prospect Street strengthens the community of graduate students already living there residentially.

One of the goals of a university is to merge living and learning, forging a single intent. This is why we have Diablo Mocha in Bass; why one side of Trumbull’s courtyard is the wall of the Sterling Memorial Reference room; why so many of us sleep with books next to our beds.

Building new residential colleges at the Prospect Street site would not only be schismatic to the physical layout of the university, but it would bring great distress to its moral bearings.

Noah Lawrence looks at veritas with clear eyes. And with the humility of greatness, Yale ought to listen.

Paul Goehrke

Nov. 8

Goehrke is a senior in Morse College.