"DAYS WITHOUT END"

One more petition added to this year's already heavy crop sets forth a humble plea for longer vacations at Christmas and attempts to offer some reason for so pleading. Aside from the fact that Princeton, Yale and North Central High all have holidays of two weeks or more at this period it might well be wise at this point for the powers that be to look somewhat more carefully into this question which for the first time in some years has aroused sufficient student interest to bring forth a petition.

Vacations are at best difficult to plan when a certain amount of curricular days must be included in the University calendar, but a three or four day shortening of the Reading Period which is now almost universally taken by the more liberal of the student body certainly would not curtail the amount of work which would be accomplished at that time. The majority of the reading assignments are with a little application easily completed within the allotted time and the subtraction of three or four days should cause no suffering, and might easily add to the pleasure of the holiday season. While it might be wise not to lengthen the holidays before Christmas it seems highly possible to add the necessary days at the end to complete a two week period. Elementary courses would certainly find it difficult to be handicapped seriously be a missed day or two.

The infamous one day holiday upon which we celebrate the founding of San Salvador and the day after Paul Revere's ride offer the scholar little in the way of rest and relaxation or a chance to get away from it all. On the contrary coming as they do usually in the middle of the week, they merely serve to disrupt the flow of work and give to the harrassed undergraduate a day in his room or the library with nothing to do and few places to go.

A possibility and a highly feasible one which has often been propounded would be to omit Columbus day and Patriot's day from the college calendar and move them into the hiatus between Thanksgiving day and the succeeding weekend. This would make a pleasant four day vacation of some worth to anyone who lived within a few hundred miles of Cambridge. Today it is the practice followed almost universally at schools and colleges throughout the country. In the West and Middle West Columbus day is not so much as given a passing thought and Patriot's day is an unheard of occasion. The long put forth myth that the University had to pay a fine or else. . . if they held college exercises on these days has been exploded with admission from University authorities themselves that it was merely a matter of custom to count the days as holidays. This blows up the last rampart that was used in an effort to defend the University's position and it now seems a ripe time to inaugurate a holiday system which is convenient to everyone and affords a more pleasant vacation, in place of an annoying odd day here and there throughout the fall and spring.