THE CLUBS' AGREEMENT.

Eleven of the undergraduate Social Clubs have entered into an agreement with reference to elections, which is a pledge of their desire to co-operate in supporting the principles for which the Freshman Dormitories stand. One of the significant clauses of the agreement provides that "no club shall elect as a member any undergraduate before the fourth Monday after the opening of college in his Sophomore year, or before that time pledge or promise election, even by implication to such undergraduate;" other clauses forbid the taking of any individual pledge or promise to join a club before the Friday following the Monday named; and prohibit all canvassing before the opening of the Sophomore year.

Heretofore the clubs were free to elect at the beginning of the Sophomore year and there was therefore no agreement to prevent canvassing in the Freshman year. The postponement of the elections protects the Freshman year completely and prevents the Freshmen from attaching undue importance on immediately becoming involved in the club system. Clubs at Harvard are purely social and in view of this the CRIMSON heartily agrees with the sentiment expressed in the following editorial which appears in the Alumni Bulletin:

"Harvard is so loosely organized that it makes no difference to a large part of the College what some clubs do, or who belongs to them. That is a blessed state of affairs, and has been one of the guarantees of democracy, liberalism, and tolerance at Cambridge. But the Freshman Dormitories are going to bring students into a contact with their classmates, much closer than any that has been possible heretofore. It is confidently hoped that the Dormitories will enrich the experience of the men who pass through them. It is likely that they will also intensify social consciousness. Therefore if the clubs were to invade each Freshman class and split it up into the elect and the non-elect, the chosen, the anxiously expectant and the hopelessly ignored, a tendency quite opposite to the purpose of the Dormitories would set at work. The agreement already guarantees that the Freshman class will be pretty completely relieved of this danger. The danger will be entirely eliminated if the few organizations which still elect Freshmen will join in the movement so propitiously begun."