CLASS ELECTIONS AGAIN.

IN the last number of the Crimson I noticed a reply to an article upon College Politics, which I wrote a few weeks ago. The reply was written in a very excited vein. The writer, who was much displeased with my sentiments, neglected to refute my arguments, and contented himself with a somewhat rambling description, founded upon premises of his own. In his indignation he forgot the courtesy which it is customary to observe in such matters, and his attacks upon me were so violent that, although I have no wish to enter upon a prolonged discussion, I feel that I am justified in saying a few words in my defence. With my opponent's premises I agree. In saying that Class Day ought to commemorate class traditions, he is unquestionably right. The present system of instruction, however, has rendered our own class traditions radically different from those of our predecessors. The Harvard class of a dozen years ago was a very different thing from the Harvard class of to-day. Brought together daily by a four-years' course of required studies, the eighty or one hundred students who entered college together had an excellent opportunity of becoming acquainted with each other and with each other's merits. The required system, besides uniting each class within itself, drew a marked line between the different classes. A student's friends, as a rule, were his classmates; his classmates, as a rule, were his friends; his college associations were connected with his class as a body; and when the time for elections came, he might justly have been expected to cast an unerring vote.

At the present day the two hundred students who enter with each class are thrown together only in chapel. After the first year in college, the elective system so completely separates classmates, and so completely breaks down all class distinctions, that, except in societies and at prayers, classes can hardly be said to retain any individual existence. Instead of his classmates, the student meets in the recitation-room his fellow-students. Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors whose tastes coincide are constantly found side by side in the same elective, while classmates whose inclinations differ do not meet twenty times in their whole course. A marked proof of this was given a short time ago, at a recitation in Junior Forensics. The instructor handed to two gentlemen, sufficiently prominent to be fairly termed representative men, corrected compositions, which he requested them to distribute among the thirty or forty classmates in the room. They endeavored to do so, and in a few moments it was apparent that after three years in college they did not know several of their classmates by sight. The class traditions which they cherished there must have been confined to a certain portion of the class.

Observation will show that their position is not unusual, and that almost every man's class associations are limited, and limited by social boundaries. The class lines are still drawn in society rooms as strictly as they ever were in the recitation-rooms of old Harvard. The modern student when he thinks of his class thinks of his society. He will no doubt remember a few men whom he has casually met in recitations or elsewhere, but he will forget the existence of numbers whose paths have deviated from his own. If he is not a member of a society, his class associations will be nothing more than reminiscences of a limited circle of personal friends. The elective system, in fact, has destroyed the sentiment of class feeling which was so strong at Harvard during the last generation. Our own class traditions can hardly be distinguished from our society memories; and it seems to me that my former arguments for nomination by societies will stand the test of class tradition.

It would be very undesirable for the societies to do more than nominate. On Class Day each of the two or three distinct sets of class traditions should be represented by certain officers, nominated by the societies with which these traditions are connected; but if for any reason these nominations should be unsatisfactory to the majority of outsiders, they should be able to refuse to elect the nominees and to demand new ones. By a plan like this a balance of power would be established, which would prevent from either side the aggression which is at present resented by both.

Non-society men, to be sure, would have no voice in the nominations, but in the elections their votes would be as powerful as any; and if they cast a solid vote they would make so formidable an opposition that the nominating bodies would have to regard their opinion. Rampant democrats may cry out that this is unfair, but they should remember that the societies differ widely in their scope, and that any student whose mind and whose manners fit him for admission to any one of them can obtain it by the exercise of a little tact. If in his Senior year he has failed to do so, he must blame himself for his position.

Before closing, I cannot refrain from noticing one or two points in my opponent's article. His analogy between college societies and masonic lodges, considered politically, is extremely pretty, but it will not bear examination. Harvard societies are confined to certain classes in our own college; and every member must be a class voter; while the masonic fraternity extends all over the civilized world, and embraces citizens and non-citizens of every country in Christendom.

His supposition that "antecedents" is synonymous with "ancestry" is mistaken. In using the former word, I referred to circumstances and not to persons, and I think that even my opponent will allow the value of antecedents of this kind. He will admit that education raises a man above the level of his ignorant fellows; and he will hardly deny that a person who has always been surrounded by cultivated and refined people has a presumptive advantage over one whose life has been passed with the comparatively uneducated classes.

B.W