PROBATION AND THE ORALS.

Probation is not to be the immediate penalty for failure to pass the orals when the suggestion made by the Student Council becomes an official rule. The Student Council has advanced the plan, and President Lowell has agreed to it, that a man who has not passed the orals by the middle of his Sophomore year shall be required to take a half course in French or German. If this preparation is not sufficient to enable him to pass his orals in June or in the following fall, he shall then go on probation. At present no such preparation is required.

This plan will do much to establish probation as a disciplinary institution to be feared and to be avoided. As the CRIMSON pointed out recently, one can now get on probation too easily to cause much concern to the man or to attach much disgrace to the condition. While the man who stands well, or even high in his studies, but who fails the orals is just as much no probation as the man who is guilty of a really serious breach of college discipline, or the man whose standing in his regular work in really a disgrace, probation will be regarded too lightly. If probation is to mean anything; if it is to be feared alike by those who are on it and those who are not, it should not be imposed for falling the orals, except as the very last penalty. The Student Council's suggestion when put in operation will make undergraduates give more serious consideration to both orals and probation.