Freshman Smoker

"Sex, beer, and a riot"--that used to be a work able definition of the freshman Smoker. Some people still consider it so. The post-war Smoker, however, is supposed to serve the useful purpose of promoting class unity and injecting some group spirit into the chaotic Yard. That's what the Student Council Committee on Freshman Affairs maintains, at any rate, and this body has presented considerable evidence that the new-model Smoker can indeed become a fine class-conscious force. But the Committee feels that the Smoker cannot be held earlier than February because of certain "organizational difficulties" and, it says, because "the class is not ready to take part in such an activity any sooner."

This is a paradoxical position and leaves the affair wide open to criticism. On the one hand the Smoker is charged with pulling the Yard together; on the other the Committee says that freshmen aren't ready for "unity" or "orientation" or any other Smoker blessings until the spring term is well underway. By February freshmen are pretty well oriented anyway, and it's a bit late for the Smoker to do much good.

Last year's Committee feared that criticism might take the Smoker off the Yard for all time if the event remained nothing more than a whopping good party, a sort of vulgarized Jubilee. This was one good reason why no Smoker was held for the seven years prior to 1948.

To silence critics and strengthen its own position, the Affairs Committee should set to work on the "organizational difficulties" so that next year the Smoker will be in its proper place near the beginning of the freshman year, instead of more than half way through it.