In Favor of Caps and Gowns.

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To the Editors of the Crimson:

A word concerning the wearing of caps and gowns after Easter by the Senior Class seems to me timely and perhaps necessary. The principal objection to wearing them is that they are said to be uncomfortably warm. This objection would not hold if we wore them without coats or vests beneath them. The material of which the gowns are made is loosely woven and thin, so that the gentle spring breezes can blow through it with a good deal less effort than an ordinary coat requires.

But the arguments in favor of wearing the outfit far outweigh the objections to doing so. There are new over five hundred and forty men whom the office is willing to rank as Seniors, but very few of the men in the class are acquainted with over one hundred and fifty of these. Let any Senior take the list of voters and count up the men he knows even by sight and he will be surprised at the smallness of his total. This is a state of things which should not exist and which we can easily remedy. If all the Seniors wore caps and gowns we would at least know each other by sight, and we would bow when we passed. A bow is a little thing but it means a good deal. Then we would make it a point to speak to everyone wearing the class uniform when we met them in recitations or in crowded hallways, in Leavitt's or in the Oak Grove, at the base-ball games or at Yard concerts. The class would be cemented. Everyone would have a feeling that he belonged to something tangible and not to a mere string of numbers that meant nothing. No one need be ashamed to wear a cap and gown who is not ashamed of the class. On the contrary, the pride which most men have in the class, in spite of the letting down of the bars due to the elective system, should make every man proud to wear the togs that mark him as a member of the class. If we can make one large sympathetic unit out of the present mob calling themselves seniors, we can well afford to put up with the slight discomfort of light skirts flapping about our knees. A SENIOR.