ATQUE VALE

These are the days when the calm of Harvard's classrooms is punctuated by bursts of significant applause. Nor are these reverberating acclamations merely expressions of long restrained energy, connotative of a schoolboy glee that school is out and playtime has arrived. In the first place playtime has not arrived nor will it for more than two laborious weeks; and secondly, if these plaudits are those of gratitude. It is gratitude for past lectures not present release nor future relaxations.

The bond between professor and student has been sorely stretched during recent years, due to the expansion of the universities and the increase in enrollment. At Harvard opportunities for contact are more prevalent perhaps than at any other equally large but less unified institutions: there are faculty-student teas are the Union in the Fall and, in addition, many professors welcome informal calls at their homes. But neither these nor similar methods of bringing the student closer to his teacher has quite succeeded in training mentor and pupil to the realization that each is, after all, more than a machine. Too often the platform lecturer is led to believe that his listeners are entirely devoid of humanistic attributes. Therefore whatever can be done to demonstrate that good instruction is appreciated and that a year of talking to impassive faces has not been a barren year is not unwelcome. As in a theatre, the noise of an applauding audience means nothing in itself and occasionally disturbs, but nevertheless it is received as a token of estimation: these concluding ceremonies, unlike many other undergraduate vociferation, have their place.