THREE OR FOUR?

Among the many hoary traditions of the University, handed down from a long forgotten past, is the inflexible rule that a senior shall take four courses. Apparently it has always been thought that a man will fritter away his time unless that time is sufficiently taken up with educational work of the sort on which the college office can keep a careful check. This may have been true in the days when the elective system was at the height of its untrammeled glory. Not so now, however, for with the more rigid application of the concentration and distribution requirements, and under the added weight of the divisionals, the average undergraduate does not have a dangerously large amount of time to waste. In fact, in order to overcome conscientiously and thoroughly the various obstacles in the road to a degree, the ordinary man must expend nearly all his efforts upon routine work in his courses.

To men who are seeking a really broad education this is a distinct hardship. Either they must neglect their college work or they must sacrifice some of the intellectual opportunities that present themselves in and around Cambridge.

It seems particularly unjust to many men; who, because they have taken five courses in either their sophomore or junior year, need but three courses to complete their work for a degree; that they should be forced to expend their efforts on a course that they neither need nor desire. To them, the work means wasting an opportunity that they will never have again; whereas they have, except for a rule that now has little reasonable foundation, completely satisfied the normal and legitimate requirements for a degree.

The division of History, Government, and Economics has taken, steps to avoid the workings of this regulation by a justifiable stratagem. According to their plan, seniors will get full course credit for their ordinary tutorial work next year. But these are not the only men who have divisionals and even these should receive the full benefit of any extra courses they may have taken before their final year in college.

There would seem prima facie to be no good cause for not instituting some reform immediately. The subject has been approached several times before without effect, and on each occasion, no reasons have been given for the failure to respond to a not inconsiderable demand for change. The CRIMSON urges strongly, that the faculty consider before the next term opens the advisability of allowing seniors who will be eligible for a degree if they pass three courses at the end of the next half year, the privilege of taking only that number of courses.