Widow, Weep For Me

(Ed. Note--The Crimson does not necessarily endorse opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters and only under special conditions, at the request of the writer, will names be with-held.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

It is with that solemn diffidence becoming to solitary interpretations of Olympian dicta, that one ventures to place an original construction on Dean Hanford's affidavit in re the evil of tutoring bureaus. If, however, temerity be not forbidden and the impressions of that temerity be not vain, one is tempted to suggest that the two humorous undergraduate publications look to their laurels. Youth has been quick to appraise and to emulate the form if not the substance of the diversion common to distraught journalists, hapless explorers, and brilliant financiers. To the hoax it has brought the charm of unflagging devotion and ingenuous extravaganza; but in maturity there remains ever that godlike leaven of simplicity which is the preface to credibility.

Dean Hanford, it appears, has looked to the substance. If, for example, students continue to patronize the widow, it may become necessary to abolish the reading periods, "which would be a great loss to the college as a whole." There is, further, a subtle irony. Establishments which depend for their daily bread on the fact that the measure of a Harvard man's scholastic achievement is taken almost entirely from his ability to sling ink into blue books and which gravy that bread by clinging to the pragmatic belief that the stupidity of examination questions varies little from year to year and always in direct proportion to the ease of marking--these establishments "make the students feel that the important thing in college is to pass examinations regardless of the means."

Here, too, is the calculated note of inuendo. While undergraduates shamelessly carry translations to class and exchange opinions with tutors as to the merits, financial and scholarly, of various houses, while instructors shamelessly advise their disciples to make use of these nefarious products, "The students make clandestine use of these abridgements," and professors and instructors have reported to me a number of instances in which students have actually been caught with these abridgements in their possession." For final delight, one finds in somber sincerity an advocate for purveyors of erudition who, with uncanny regularity, find pernicious errors and ommissions within their texts. The affidavit regards the use of abridgements "as unfair to the authors." These men get their only reward for years of slavery from the normal "royalties under their contracts with the publishing houses. These royalties ordinarily are dependent on the volume of sales... The abridgement may ordinarily be had at a price from one-fifth to one third of the price of the book, etc."

Perfect, to the commas, one would say. But even a lily can be gilded. Calmly the CRIMSON concludes its comment, "The tutoring bureaus should stop helping the undergraduates down the path of intellectual disintegration; but the experience of Harvard and others has shown that they will not stop, and cannot be stopped."

One will perhaps be forgiven for reemphasizing the respective suggested cures; the Dean--abolition of the reading period, the CRIMSON--futility. In either instance a hint that the solution might long ago have been effected by shifting emphasis away from examinations would have plucked leaves from the victors wreath. The clubmen and the future revenues of Harvard are still safe. (Name withheld by request)