Phi Beta Kappa Fraternity

(Ed. Note--The Crimson does not necessarily endores opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters and only under special conditions, at the request of the writer, will names be withheld.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

I was glad to happen across your editorial, Friday, December 2, on Phi Beta Kappa elections. I should think that if any so-called "old-timers" read it, it will strike a responsive note in their feelings and their hearts.

Something over twenty years ago Phi Beta Kappa held an election one spring morning to elect, as I remember, thirteen out of the first twenty ranking Seniors.

This very exclusive Harvard Chapter passed right over two of the first seven ranking men. That June, one was graduate magna cum Iaude, and the other summa cum laude. One of the men entered Harvard Law School and was elected to the Harvard Law Review, than which there is no greater honor. The other man went out into the business world, and became one of the right-hand men to Mr. Gerald Swope.

Neither man was much of a mixer, but so far as I know, neither had a sordid past. The election was influenced by spite, and by personal considerations which today one would call dirty politics.

That election hurt those men and the other men who were passed over. You may agree quite naturally that it was a slap in the face, for in those days men for some inexplicable reason were proud to wear "keys."

I presume that both men as they have risen in the world have forgotten this interesting incident--but I, being the sophomore roommate of one of these men, will never forget his consternation and the poignant sense of discouragement. But both men bore their silent grief like gentlemen. W. B. Webster '11.