CRIMSON SPONSORS FOUR COMPETITIONS

Tonight at 7 o'clock at the Crimson Building competitions for the news, photographic, business, and editorial boards of the CRIMSON will begin. The news, photographic, and business competitions are open only to Freshmen while the editorial competition is intended solely for Juniors and is the last chance offered the class of 1926 to make the CRIMSON.

At the meeting tonight the candidates for the various departments will have their work explained to them by the editors of the different boards.

An Aid to Studies

A prominent graduate and former Editor of the CRIMSON recently wrote in regard to competitions that the prevalent theory that competitions in general and the CRIMSON competitions in particular are detrimental to the scholastic standing of the candidates is erroneous. "Not only is this an entirely wrong theory," he stated, "but it is also diametrically opposed to the truth as upheld by facts. The veracity of the opinion that I have always held that the training received in competition helped rather than hindered scholastic work was proved by the record of the 1924 CRIMSON Board of Editors, which I ran across in one of the University CRIMSON. Not only did six of the editors graduate with honors, but four of them were elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

A Broadening Influence

"A CRIMSON competition is eminently worth while for several reasons. First, to make a success of college life both scholastically and socially it is necessary to know the college. By knowing the college I mean knowing the men who run it, within and without, undergraduate leaders of the various activities and members of the faculty and administrators of the several departments; I mean knowing the how and the why of all that goes on in regard to Harvard. I wonder how many undergraduates have a very definite idea of what President Lowell is striving to attain, of the building program, of the reason why it is so necessary to widen Holyoke Street, of the purpose of the tutorial system or of divisional examinations or of the Union?

"I can confidently assert that there is no better way to get to know Harvard than through the CRIMSON. A candidate comes into contact with the heads of every activity and with prominent business men in Boston, and so the CRIMSON becomes a gateway to an infinite fund of information.

Example of Famous Men

"All these and many others, which I have not space to mention, are the advantages of the CRIMSON competitions. There seem to be no disadvantages. My final word would be to think of the careers of A. B. Houghton, recently appointed Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, of Franklin D. Roosevelt, of Thomas Lamont, one of the foremost financiers of the day, and of a dozen others, all of whom have been members of the CRIMSON, and do likewise."