A Protest Against Giving Up the Tree Exercises.

To the Editors of the Crimson:

It is safe to say that there are few members of the undergraduate body of this University who are not amazed and indignant at the position now taken by the committee of the Corporation with regard to the Tree Exercises on Class Day.

If the committee had taken this stand at first; if it had not encouraged the Senior class with groundless hopes, and led them to believe that it looked for the modification of the Tree exercises and not their abolishment; the students would have respected its opinions and given it the credit of being frank and sincere.

As it is, the Senior class has every reason to be indignant. The Class Day Committee has not been fairly dealt with by the gentlemen of the Corporation. These gentlemen asked the committee for suggestions as to certain modifications of the exercises, they let it be understood that with these modifications they would have no objection to the ceremony about the Tree. After three weeks of diligent work, the committee drew up a plan which met every objection originally made by the Corporation. The flowers were to be lowered to avoid unnecessary roughness and to give every man an equal chance of getting flowers without the aid of cliques or squads, and a system of exits was devised by which the Tree enclosure might be emptied in four minutes, thus eliminating all danger from panic.

Yesterday the Class Day Committee respectfully submitted this plan to the Corporation committee, only to have it entirely rejected. It then became plain that from the first the Corporation had resolved upon the total abolishment of the time honored custom. Our class has been doubly aggrieved. Our opinions were asked for, and when offered were rejected without hesitation, and a custom which we all love is to be torn away from us. Further discussion of the objections of the Corporation is out of place, they have already been considered and, we believe, fairly met.

Gentlemen, the blow does not fall upon the class of Ninety-seven alone; it falls upon the whole body of students; it falls upon the graduates who year after year have gathered about the old Tree and revived the memory of their college days. I have no sympathy with the sentimentality which defends a bad custom just because it is an old custom. I believe that the scrimmage about the Tree is not only an old custom but a good one. I believe that it can be and has been conducted in a manly, fair way, and that hundreds of graduates look back upon it as one of their happiest. Class Day memories. The customs and traditions that are left to Harvard men are few enough, and we should treasure those few jealously. It may be too late for us to save this cherished ceremony, but we owe it to ourselves as Harvard men; we owe it to the graduates who have left the custom in our keeping, and we owe it to those who are to come after us, manfully and vigorously to protest against the threatened action of the Corporation.

No ordinary protest or petition will be of the slightest weight. I believe there is but one thing for the Senior Class to do, and that is to draw up a protest stating that if the Corporation abolishes the scrimmage around the Tree, the Class Day Committee will resign, and that there will be no Class Day whatever for the class of Ninety-seven. In this way alone the Seniors may show that they are in earnest, that the custom which is so lightly disposed of by the Corporation is of vital importance to them. It will arouse the graduates as no other protest could and it will bring the strongest pressure to bear upon the Corporation.

FREDERIC ANSON BURLINGAME.Cambridge, Jan 23, 1897.