"THE OBJECT ALL SUBLIME"

Returning for the last, long mile, students will be welcomed with the familiar greeting: "All undergraduates not on the Dean's list must attend their first class today." No doubt that reminder brought back many last night who would have preferred another evening at home, or could have found profit in an extra twenty-four hours to over-take Divisionals. No doubt others will have missed trains, or overslept their first classes, or in other ways inadvertently sinned. The law can be no respecter of persons, and the penalty is probation.

This particular law undoubtedly works injustice to individuals: many will argue that they lose no more by cutting their class after a holiday than their fifth or fifteenth, whereas the corresponding gain may be very great. But this time it is not a question of the individual. Kant's "categorical imperative" fits the case conveniently: If everyone did as the individual feels inclined to do, there would be empty classrooms on the day before and after each holiday. Professors, rather than waste their lectures, would agree not to hold classes that day; students would proceed to extend the vacation still farther, and the cycle would be followed out to absolute zero. Such a prospect demands that the line be drawn somewhere, and the authorities have drawn it in the logical place-at the beginning.

The problem, then, is not a matter of amending the law, which is necessary, but rather of making the punishment fit the crime. Probation in general is naturally intended as a warning, a preventive for the man who is threatened with the malady of collegiate dropsy. But in this case it is applied as a cure and it is naturally ineffective to make a student recover from the loss of a class which he has already out. And it is bitter out of all proportion to its purpose. A much milder does should be sufficient to insure attendance before and after holidays. The trouble is that the college office has found no intermediate measure.

One possibility suggests itself-what is, popularly known as "cut pro," The Office recognized no such name; but when a man is in danger of being penealized for excessive cutting, he is given a "warning" that another cut will bring probation. That same "warning" ought to serve for those who cut before and after vacations. Rather than lose the privilege of any more cuts for several months, most students would take care to attend their first and last classes; while those who would rather have a day or two more vacation, and attend every other meeting, throughout the term, would be so few that they would not interfere with the routine of classes. The purpose of filling the classrooms would be served, without undue severity of full probation.

Meanwhile, this whole scheme appears to be an argument in, favor of compulsory attendance, which is needed for these disciplinary reason. It is, in fact, the strongest argument that has been found. But the system is a rather large mule for such a small pack. The millenium will have to find a substitute. It is an object which, like the Mikado's, "we shall achieve in time."