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Weir House

It has been said that people live at Weir for two reasons: for hot showers and for company; fellowship may be oppressive and the water cold; but the generalization contains the truth that Weir is a boarding house with something added that no boarding house can give. That something may be what is said by the time-worn motto-"Strength through living together," but to my mind is more connected with the growth of groups within Weir-a practice deplored by many but indulged in by everybody. At weir, the chances of falling in with a suitable group are higher than in a boarding house or in a College club. This, in my opinion, is the chief value of the institution; it fosters a restricted sociability.

Among ninety-odd students, most people are able to find suitable companionship. Those that can't either seem quite satisfied to be that way, or else are somewhat restrained, within themselves, from any kind of social intercourse. Of the rest, the majority, many types are discernible. There are people who like sport more than anything else, or as much as anything else; these are often to be found together, playing together, talking, arguing, and listening to the radio together. There are keen billiardists and table-tennis players who use the recreation room together. There are pure and mysterious scientists who often talk together at the meal table, to the bewilderment and annoyance of the rest of the table. There are the aesthetes and the literati, who play Ellington and Armstrong discs together, read Eliot and Thomas together, and borrow each others books. There are some philosophers-everybody is a philosopher at some time or other but some are more persistent than others- who hold interminable supper parties, and forever approach insoluble questions. There are mercenary types, often but not always, law and accountancy students, who gather to discuss the latest price of divorce or the latest quotation of stock. There are politicians, theoretical and practical. Fascist and Marxist, parochial and cosmopolitan, who are forever arguing. There are all sorts and conditions of men and most people in the House find some of them pleasant and some repulsive.

Of course, these classifications are extremely general and far from complete. A member of a few groups cannot appreciate the ramifications of the lot. Further, they overlap to a considerable extent. An aesthete may be a philosopher, a scientist a politician, an accountancy student may quite well be a reader of Shakespeare and an admirer of Van Gogh. Pure types are abstractions, but useful ones for the purposes of discussion.

You might say, but what is noticeable about this? What is there in these sentences which could not equally well apply to any bunch of ninety University students? That is just the point. Any group of ninety students would show all these interests, and possibly more or different ones, but this is not the whole picture. Hypothetical groups of ninety people have no existence beyond the mind that formulates or the mind that accepts the hypothesis. Weir is an actual group of ninety people, and the only such group at V.U.C. That is how weir House can claim to be a very important part of the College.

This brings up another point. There may be some truth in the motto after all. Living together does provide a necessary stimulus. People so more and do it better when they are doing it either with other people or against them. Fifteen people in a group play better football than fifteen people set out over the country at five mile intervals. And this is probably the explanation why so many of the notable people of the College have at some time or other graced the halls of Weir. Several prominent college sportsmen come from Weir, footballers, harriers and hockey-players. There are many debaters in our midst many College journalists and verse-writers-some notorious. Perhaps most important of all, there are many successful students, winners of Senior and Overseas Scholarships. Apart from this there are also many people adroit at the use of teargas, and home-made explosives. There's a wide variety and such people usually owe a good deal to the company they get.

The war was a difficult period for the House. It brought shortages of staff, and a depletion of the numbers of the older students. Weir became a little adolescent, a little more irresponsible than usual, perhaps a bit petty in some of its habits. But with peace has come the end of much of this. Staffing is back to normal, and even if the service doesn't please some who were here ten years ago, it seems pretty good to those who lived here through the war. And with a large number of returned service-men back there seems to be a fair chance of an active future.