Monitors for the Millions . . .

It must be wonderful to be a graduate student. Each term about this time, or maybe a week earlier, every undergraduate sizes up his situation academic-wise and says to himself just that: wouldn't it be nice to be a graduate.

It isn't only those hour exams (for undergraduates only) or mid-term grades (for undergraduates only). They surely annoy the College student enough by themselves, but they are joined along toward the first third of the term by another device designed to excite the undergraduate's jealousy: monitors.

Monitoring is a strange thing--one of those subtle but inescapable facts of Harvard College life that you forget between terms but never quite escape. The happy undergraduate starts off each of his courses in the now semester with a peculiar eagerness in his heart, a positive joy in some cases. He runs along for a month wondering why he's enjoying his work so much more this term than last, when all of a sudden the great fact creeps up on him.

He walks into his course meeting one day, aims toward his customary area of repose, and looks around for his expected companions. "They must be tired," he thinks, as he perceives an astonishing group of neatly but unfamiliarly shaped heads around him. "They'll want to see my notes."

On the moment, a pungent-looking persons wanders over and says briskly, "I'm awfully sorry, but you seem to be sitting in my seat." That's all there is to it; no protest, no appeal from this awful fact; just silent submission.

What follows is frequently even more terrifying. The pathetic figure of the lecturer in the course cowers in its appropriate academic corner, and the Head Monitor (Head) takes over. "Attendance starts today," it warns. Then it launches into a list of the Social Cases: "Rows C through G for Radcliffe; graduates can sit in the rear; auditors fill in the spaces at the sides; and (New This Term) there's a special left-handed row in the right front corner. If you're hard of hearing see me after class . . ."

It's the left-handed rows that turn possible system into chaos. Exceptions are fine: but when they grow too numerous, they take over the rule. Attendance comes and it goes (a month after the beginning of the term), but it fails to impress when it assigns special rows to the left-handed.

That is only a symbol, too. What has happened in general is certainly not restricted to results of the left-handed insurrection. What has happened is boredom and indifference at the results of the system. "It must," says the undergraduate, "be wonderful to be a graduate student."