MORE THAN AN INDEX

The criticism of college official publications--the "course" pamphlets--which was published in a recent number of the Alumni Bulletin is worthy of much consideration. The criticism applies particularly to those courses open to Freshmen, and is so applied by the author of the Communication, Mr. George Woodbridge. Undergraduates who have been at the University for a year or more, or even for a few months, form a habit of asking other undergraduates about the content of a course. Thence evolves the neo-professional informer who has every "snap" and "stiff" course at his finger-tips. For this reason the old student pays no heed to the meagre one or two lines of description which go with the majority of titles, since the pamphlet of courses has become little more than an "index of first lines" to him.

Although some freshmen with friends already in college are in a like case, to a large number Harvard is new and strange soil. It is little wonder that these men meet their faculty advisors with almost no idea of what courses, aside from prescribed courses, they wish to take in their first year. For even if the range of choice in the first year is "cabin'd, cribb'd, bound in", yet there is some choice. And aside from this point, the descriptions are so curt and dry that they are really repellent, as Mr. Woodbridge notes. Therefore freshmen naturally hate English A and German A with the feeling that they are mere sheep being lead to the slaughter.

There is no need of handing over the pamphlet to a professional advertisement writer and asking him to give it a severe injection of "pep". On the other hand it is poor policy to make the "big stick" the most apparent thing in the descriptions. It would seem feasible to print a special pamphlet for incoming freshmen with a full description of the content of each possible freshman course. The description alone will be sufficient attraction without further flourishes and furbelows or more or less veiled threats of probation.