Seniors' Gowns are Womens'.

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

According to strict academic usage, the Harvard Senior's gown means, if anything, that his sister has taken a bachelor's degree. It is a bachelor's gown, so few Seniors are really entitled to it before Class Day, and not all the wearers, unforunately, are entitled to it then. It is a woman's gown--hence the Mother Hubbard shape, and the cut of a sweet girl graduate on the maker's advertisement. Now nobody minds whether the Senior wears his sister's insignia or not; it is funny, but harmless. But when the 1916 Class Committee solemnly asserts that this guileless travesty is one of the oldest traditions of Harvard, it is time for a protest in the name of our motto. There was a remote epoch in which academic dress was regularly and correctly worn, but throughout the greater part of the nineteenth century the Harvard Senior wore ordinary clothes on all occasions except Class Day, when he appeared in a dress suit and high hat. He wore his dress suit all day, and consequently looked as if he had been up all night. The present gown was introduced about 1892 as a substitute for the dress suit. As no men's gowns were manufactured in this country, the Seniors bought women's gowns. The few people who knew the difference didn't care, and the gown became a custom. Some years later an ingenious Class Committee made the rule that gowns should be worn all through May--that was a move to induce more men to buy gowns, as it seemed to many that a special garment for the Class Day exercises was a needless expense. Also, it served as a badge by which members of the class could recognize each other--that was before such "ancient traditions" of Senior dormitories and class buttons had grown up.

There is a great deal to be said for the gowns, but their antiquity is not one of the arguments in their favor. F. SCHENCK '09.