BURNED FINGERS

In a recent letter sent to President Stanley of Amherst, the flery class of 1932 presents a clear-cut and convincing case before the faculty that deprived them of all cut privileges. For the sake of the college, the sophomore class chose formal protest. Instead of open revolt and in so doing placed the faculty in a position of defense. Caught in the wheels of a precedent of three years standing, the fear of scorn from other classes forced the sophomores to carry out a performance which many thought "fool-hardy and dangerous." Acting directly counter to a student-faculty agreement, the student committee was not consulted until the evening following the edict depriving them of cuts.

For the past three years the faculty must have been aware of the dangers of the traditional cap-burning, yet left the authority vested in Scarab, an undergraduate organization. When their own policy of letting the undergraduates manage this particular question was found to be a mistake, the undergraduates paid for it. The educational device of treating college men like mature men has so often been forgotten when questions of any importance arise, that the Amherst class of 1932 naturally thought that in this case the faculty had seen and were satisfied.

It is true that youth usually demands the trial and, error method. Nevertheless this psychological pattern might have been understood and dealt with in a more intelligent fashion by the Amherst faculty. A burned child may acquire a beneficial fear of the fire; but a dead one is of no use to anybody.