CLUBS

Apropos of various books and magazine articles on undergraduate life in general and society life in particular, we read with much interest an editorial in the current Alumni Bulletin. Quoting an undergraduate publication, it says that "Probably the most significant thing to be said about clubs at Harvard is that they are unimportant."

At first glance this sentiment appears somewhat startling. But a second thought will show the statement to be absolutely correct in describing the club situation as all Harvard men should wish it to be. In fact the "power" so-called, of clubs at Harvard, is individually so meagre that a New York newspaper recently published three pictures: Yale's Skull and Bones, the Princeton Ivy Club House, and the Harvard Union, under the general heading of influential college societies. To Harvard men the picture of the Union grouped by the side of the Bones house may have generated a strain of humor totally unintended by the energetic New York editor. But, truly, what picture should represent Harvard as its "most influential club?" The fact is there is no such thing here.

However, we think that our club system is by no means perfect. A suggestion tending toward the abolition of the so-called "waiting" club for Freshmen should receive the closest attention on the part of all concerned.