DARTABOARD

IT'S ALL IN THE NUMBERS

From "quota queens" to staunch meritocrats, no one can deny that race, once a question of principles, is now a numbers game. A recent Perspective article counted the representation of minorities among--MSA hyperactivists, hold your fire--not the Faculty (for the whole University has those figures memorized by now), but among toy dolls. Sleuthing in the aisles of Toys R-Us, Perspective found That only one of a dozen-or-so dolls was Black.

A perspicuous observation, indeed, but Dartboard decided to delve deeper. WE didn't limit our search to mere playthings at the toy store, but in fact randomly sampled actual Americans. The shocking result: only one in tenor-so was Black!

At Toys-R-Us, a collection of 34 Cabbage Patch Kids yielded only 7 Cabbages of color. And, as everyone knows, as Cabbage Patch Kids go, so goes the nations. Dartboard's crack investigative team sampled several sets of 34 Americans and found that only 7 out of each groups were people of color--the nation has done no better at promoting diversity than has Hasbro.

America can and must do better until then. Dartboard's minions will agitate, march, picket and protest. This shameful underrepresentation will not stand!

READ OUR LIPS

Clintonomics has come to Cambridge. The UC this week began considering a hike in the term bill fee, from $20 to $30.

President Clinton has been able to imbue higher taxes with some sort of moral worth, especially when the taxes are sold as a way to shrink the deficit. But Whatever fiascos and imbroglios the UC treats us to each years, deficits are about as little a problem for the UC as surpluses are for the US.

The proposed $10 increase in the UC fee is not likely to prevent anyone from coming in Harvard. The UC fee represents a whopping 0.08 percent of the annual cost of attending Harvard, a little over 0.1 percent with the increase. Still, that's little consolation to those of us who find that the UC represents exactly 0.00 percent of our undergraduate experience.

The real change would be that students would lose their check-Off option and would have to write to get their $30 refund. The budding IRS agents in the UC figure that although Harvard students love to write intellectualized polemics, they don't love to write anything so blandly "useful" as a request for a few dollars.

A nice analytical stab, but totally off the mark. Mom and Pop, rather than students themselves, often deal with their term bills: and for those who do handle their own term bills, the UC should understand that at humanities-leaning Harvard, most student have lost the ability to subtract $16.67 from $24000. They are still capable, how-ever, of writing letters to Dean Epps--although, we suspect, they be a bit longer than necessary.

TABULA RASA

Now that midterms are drawing to a close, Harvard students face one of the most puzzling conundrums of academic life. What happened to all that information we had crammed into our heads before exams?

Students who strain to remember the statistics and quotes spilled our into bluebooks in a manic frenzy will come up with mere bits and pieces.

Well, researchers at the Graduate School of Education seem to have found the answer to this particular mystery.

Taking mid-terms, they have concluded, is the same process as casting a spell in Dungeons and Dragons: you memorize a lot of arcane nonsense, and once you use it--POOF!--it's gone.

You says you don't know what we're talking about? You say you never played that silly game? Don't deny it. You ARE a Harvard student, after all.

And anyway, we remember you: Zoltar, the psionic half-gnome cleric. How'd we find that out? We cast an ESP spell, of course.