A LETTER FOR YOUR SWEATER

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I had a little gripe with the Athletic Department last Saturday which I almost was prepared to forget. For the Dartmouth game I was assigned seat 18 on row RR in section 35. I might add that I am a junior and that my application was in on time.

Situated high in the hooded bleachers, that seat for those who have not already guessed, offers an imposing view of one of the Harvard Stadium pillars-and nothing else. Tsk. tsk. tsk. All right, granted that it cost me nothing, so what if I stood and watched the game? Probably an oversight anyway right?

All the same I decided to call the Ticket Office. The gentleman to whom I spoke was not only sympathetic but also unusually informative. I learned there are six such blind spots in each of the thirty-seven sections. as well as an undetermined number of seats in the lower bleachers of section 31 on the Harvard side and of the corresponding section on the opponent's side which are wholly or largely blocked by the Team's presence.

It is nonetheless the explicit and longstanding policy of the Ticket Office, for the big games, to see that these seats be "utilized," either by assigning them to students or by selling them to the general public at $6 a throw.

The man told me that he himself has complained about this practice but to no avail and with little appreciation on the part of his superiors. When asked what channels I might use to request a change of this policy, he hemmed and hawed and replied to the effect that he would be sticking his neck out in revealing them. He simply advised me to think up some way on my own.

The Princeton game is approaching I would like to urge anyone who gets seats 2-4 or 17-19 on row RR of any section or any seats on rows A or B of section 31 A) not to take them, B) to bring a good book or radio along C) to resell them to a high-ranking official of the Athletic Department or to a member of the Board of Overseers.

Of course, were I feeling quixotic. I might simply have asked the policy-makers at the Ticket Office to take those lemons off the market. But I am not feeling quixotic.

In fact. I feel damn outraged when I ask the policy-makers to take the thumbscrews off those employees who show humane though economically impractical (at the risk of being redundant) concern for the people they serve.

And this goes not only for the gentleman at the Ticket Office. I'm also talking about some of the ladies at our dining rooms who stand in mortal terror lest Bumble the Beadle see them giving us more than our ration of roast-beef.