"LET'S PUT OUT THE LIGHTS..."

The imminence of mid-year examinations has again made the closing of Widener an irksome problem. Realizing the tremendous inconvenience to students, particularly during the reading period, the History and Government department has sanely petitioned for the opening of Widener until ten o'clock in the evening, as formerly. It is admittedly a problem of minor economy, a saving in light and labor of approximately fifteen or twenty thousand dollars a year. But more than that it is a question of whether the economy is sufficiently significant to outweigh the annoying injustice and inconvenience to undergraduate and graduate students.

The graduate student perhaps feels this restriction more seriously and continuously than any other member of the University. A large amount of his work demands the direct examination of original sources and manuscripts in the stacks. The present limitation of time has resulted in overcrowding the stacks and unsatisfactory study in such a hurried condition. That the graduate student should think more and read less is perhaps a sagacious enough truism, but the mere arbitrary contention does not change the present graduate study over night. The extinction of light does not necessarily bring more and brighter light. The undergraduate is certainly not left untouched during the reading period. Many books are needed which the house library does not possess, but are reserved in the Widener reading room. The early closing naturally limits the volume and distribution of readers at this time: for example, there is only one copy of Croce's History of Nineteenth Century Europe available for a large course. The unlimited reading in History and Government is, of course, especially affected.

If rigid economy is so necessary, it seems that a less vital organ of the University might have been curtailed: the appropriations perhaps, for those less essential appendages, the military and naval science departments. The present status of the University treasury does not seem to demand the saving of a few thousand dollars for the hampering of the primary educational tool at any time and least of all during the reading period.