AUTHENTIC LECTURE NOTES

Within little more than a week, the final lecture will have been delivered in most of the upperclass courses. A majority of the undergraduates, after the Christmas vacation, will begin a diligent search for lecture notes, either among their friends or among the numerous tutoring agencies which thrive just outside the gates of the Yard. It is not only those who have spent the fall in riotous living who will be engaged in this prevalent mid-year sport, but all those who have cut lectures freely and all those to whom extensive note-taking is a distraction from lectures.

Despite the ostrich-like attitude which College officials have sometimes ludicrously assumed on the matter of tutoring bureau outlines, there is, to the undergraduate, nothing morally reprehensible in the practice of using notes which are not his own. Borrowed or purchased notes are regarded as a perfectly legitimate aid, not to night-before cramming, but to methodical review. The only reason why more men do not use tutoring bureau outlines is that they are so inadequate and inaccurate as to be well-nigh useless.

The obvious solution to the problem of obtaining good supplementary lecture notes in for the professors themselves to prepare comprehensive outlines or even digeats of their lectures, and to distribute them or sell them to students taking their courses, exactly as textbooks are sold at present. A set of notes compiled by the lecturer would give every student an authentic and useful substitute for the lectures he missed, and at the same time relieve him of the necessity of taking copious notes at the lectures he attended.

To the die-hards who fear a sudden fall in attendance at lectures if authentic notes were made available, it need only be pointed out that the same objection was raised against the dropping of compulsory attendance at lectures. Yet the academic standards of the College have risen notably since liberal cutting has been allowed. The lecturer who cannot compete with his own lecture notes had best stop wasting the students' time.