METHODS

The November grades have finally reached the hands of the advisers, professional and undergraduate; and the annual inquest is getting under way. The fatalities have been felt more than usual this year especially among the Freshmen. The more experienced members of the Faculty are hardened, perhaps, to the sight of a dreary string of "Ds" and "Es" on an advisee's report slip, and pass the matter off as just another of many "bad years"; but the younger instructors have good reason for being discouraged, and so far no Senior Advisor has been able to advance anything more constructive than bad language.

On the surface, this weakness in first year marks can be attributed to one of two reasons: either the class of 1926 is more than usually slow in getting started in the way it should go, or else the "powers that be" have decided to institute an academic reign of terror for the ostensible purpose of encouraging higher grades and more serious devotedness to duty.

The second possibility seems more likely than the first. The present Freshmen may or may not fall below the standard, it is too soon to tell; but there have been other indications than marks that point to a stiffening in the application of rules in University Hall. For example, freshmen have recently been put on "cut pro" without any previous warning or admonitions,-the judiciousness of which is questionable in view of the fact that no definite information is given officially to entering men as to the number of "cuts" permitted. The application of the rule appears in the light of strictness rather than sympathy,-the imposing of the penalty instead of an attempt to forestall the crime.

But in all of this the hard-worked Office is not entirely to blame. A major part of the fault lies with the individual section man, assistant, and instructor. He is the one who gives the marks upon which the Administrative department must take action, and all to frequently he is either careless or indifferent in cases that demand individual consideration. Sometimes it is an over-wrought sense of dignity that causes the trouble, sometimes the fallacious theory that every undergraduate delights in trying to "put one over on him"-and at all times there is a sad lack of that kindly humanity appreciated in the Professors.

The small class-room offers the only opportunity that the first year man has to get into close contact with representatives of the Faculty, and the individual instructor is the one from whom he derives his first impressions of the University as a whole. The attitude of the instructor represents for him, in great measure, the attitude of official Harvard. And when a tendency toward petty terrorism is coupled with unusual strictness on the part of the Office, the product bears the marks of defect.

Harvard, to use a shop-worn phrase, is not a school for irresponsible boys, but a University. Correction and discipline there must be; but at the same time there should also be an understanding and appreciation of undergraduate difficulties, especially those of the men to whom the University's complex rules and institutions are a comparatively unknown quantity. A word of friendly advice offered in time is worth more in building up individual effort and interest than many years of probation and "E"s.- provided, of course, that men can be found with the time and inclination to give it.