SITTING IN OR SITTING OUT

Last winter the CRIMSON began publishing a list of all lectures given by members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences which the instructor felt to be of interest to men not enrolled in the course. The success of the experiment was so marked that this year the feature has been developed further and, as announced today in the news column, hereafter the CRIMSON will publish every morning the lectures of general interest to be given that day and the next.

What we hope from these announcements of lectures is a step towards removing one obstacle from the road leading to Divisionals. So many courses are given at the University at present that the prescribed seventeen, limited by the requirements of Concentration and Distribution, leave the prospective graduate with a feeling that somehow or other he is not getting even the cream off the milk. A half course for sub-freshmen on "What to Take in Harvard" might develop a man capable of choosing the most interesting, broadening and thoroughly satisfactory courses given in Cambridge; but, failing that, the great majority of undergraduates at the end of four years look back to an academic career full of mistakes in judgment and neglected opportunities. Sometimes a necessary History course conflicts with an English course which is not to be given the next year, and the year after that the course is limited to Freshmen and Sophomores, and so on. The sum total of it all is, that many men graduate from college without ever having come in contact, due to no fault of their own, with more than a few of the faculty, even through the impersonal medium of the lecture hall.

The one "way out" for most,--if not entirely a satisfactory one,--is the privilege of "sitting in on extra courses. This may give the student the idea of an authority in any field which interests him, without the necessity of doing the outside work, and without the expense of an extra course, simply by giving two or three hours a week, as he chooses, to attending the lectures in the course. It is admittedly a makeshift, but a glimpse of other "islands somewhere in the seas of ignorance" is certainly better than being completely adrift.

What makes the process of "sitting in" more or less difficult to keep up, in spite of well-hammered intentions at the beginning of each year, is first of all, the difficulty anyone has of overcoming the physical inertia to go to a lecture, subject uncertain, in a course he is not taking. Added to this are the complications of time and conflicting courses which make it even harder to stick by his resolution.

It is these difficulties which the announcement of lectures can remedy by offering for every undergraduate to pick and choose the topics of the day in the various class-rooms. If it succeeds in helping one man to fill in some bad holes in his knowledge, and another to get a "close-up" of a subject he has seen from afar in a general course, and above all, if it helps the average schedule-fettered undergraduate to prepare for his Divisionals, it will have accomplished its object.