Crimson Competition Opens Tonight

On a day when the world is falling to pieces comes the entrancing news that Jack Kennedy was once a member of the business board of the Crimson. Now, everyone knows that FDR was President once, and that of course went a long way toward inspiring the celebrated inscription on the Great Seal: "After 14 Plympton, 1600 Pennsylvania."

You can see that it is not altogether surprising that the vice-President had no chance to use the Seal; he was no Crimed, and therefore a Philistine. "There is one sure road to the White House," is an aphorism which you must have heard, and the truth of it is indisputable. That is what things like Winter Competitions are for: to engender those who sit around summit tables.

The Crimson, for fairly obvious reasons, can be a lot more interesting than something like the Moscow University Herald (which, one hazards, regarded 600 annual purges as regrettable faux par that had no place in a sober chronicle of the passing days). Yes, yes, the Crimson is much more than this; as it is easy to see, it is no official organ for anything.

Blood Needed

But there comes a time in the harmless progress of publication when every newspaper (particularly one whose senior staff manages to vanish every year or so) must have new blood. That is what things like Winter Competitions are for: to obtain it.

And there is so much that one can do on any of the four (news, editorial, business, photographic) boards of the Crimson. You can write editorial columns full of scabrous attacks on people you dislike, and touching profiles of people you revere; scathing reviews of shows you walked out of, and sensitive Cabages and Kings reflecting moods you have been in.

The news page is always something new, largely because people have a charming habit of not doing precisely the same thing every day. You call Important Sources to Confirm Anonymous Reports; you wheedle information out of truculent Persons in Authority; you write stark exposes of those whom formerly you had thought innocuous.

If you do not think that the Business Board constitutes an absolutely invaluable business experience, you are likely to be dead wrong. As an organization through which well over $100,000 is annually circulated; as an advertising medium that can, if it likes, reject advertisements, and need never to turn to that foul blot on the narrow lapel of a businessman's dignity, the 'suck ad," for sustenance--the Crimson is a king in a rainy country, a monarch inthe city of Cambridge.

On to Glory

The Photographic Board takes pictures, and very good pictures they are, too. Some malicious person with an evil tongue has spread abroad the rumor that news photography dampens creativity of the camera and darkroom. Not so; this spirit must be exorcised. Conjuro te, Satanass for all kinds of photographers is the Board a haven. It is just that, in fact, for those who have never seen the inside of a camera. For this, as for all Boards, you need absolutely no experience whatever; so if you have often expressed a longing to photograph well, to develop, fix, enlarge, engrave, and mount pictures, and to design photography layouts for features, translate this longing into action; of such stuff are great men made.

Introductory meeting are at the Building, December 5 and 6. Shall you seize the moment now or slide in Lethe? Ladies (yes suffrage movements have most definitely wrought their work in this citadel) and gentlemen, the day is yours. Take it while you may.