THE COLUMBIA MATTER.

COLUMBIA'S challenge to the Boat Club has been declined. The advisability of accepting this challenge has always been an open question; and now, when the reasons are known which caused Harvard to decline it (the conditions which Columbia felt that the acceptance of her challenge for last year had given her strength to insist upon), the action of the Executive Committee in settling the matter as they have will, we think, meet general approval.

Word was sent to Columbia that, as it would be necessary, in the event of a race, for the same Harvard crew to row Columbia which was to row Yale, Harvard would like to make the same agreement with Columbia as with Yale in regard to the men eligible for the crew. By this agreement candidates for the degrees A. B., B. S., Ph. B., LL. B., B. D., M. D., Ph. D., and A. M., are eligible to the crew; but candidates for the five lastnamed degrees must previously have taken the degree A. B., B. S., or Ph. B., from the college in whose crew they are to row.

At Columbia's request Harvard agreed that the degrees C. E. and M. E., given at the Columbia School of Mines, be regarded as equivalent to the degree B. S. given at our Scientific School. Columbia, however, further desired, under plea of inferiority in point of numbers, to include among men eligible for her crew members of the Schools of Law and Medicine who were graduates neither of Columbia nor of any other college. Harvard thought that such an exception to the rule adopted by Yale and herself looked toward including in the crews a class of oarsmen whom it was particularly desirable to exclude, namely, the men who might enter some department of the University for the purpose of joining the crew.

Harvard thought the exception was therefore a bad one to make; and, moreover, that it might give Columbia a decided advantage over Harvard, - an advantage which our record for the past five or six years has not placed us in a position to yield. Accordingly, a reply was made to Columbia that she could have no advantage which Harvard did not have under her agreements with Yale. Columbia replied that she would "row only a university race," and she desired an answer to her original challenge. An answer was immediately sent, - a refusal.