CRIMSON CONFIDENTIAL GUIDE

Such an attractive title, especially to the morbidly curious, added to the reputation of Sociology for its preponderance of C's, has contributed to make this course one of the most popular in the department. But its popularity has always been rather with non-concentrators in view of the temptation to snooze throughout the lectures, if indeed one attends them.

Let it not be said that the reading is uninteresting, for Professor Ford is a past master at the art of providing palatable assignments, but the subject-matter of the lectures is so well covered by the books that attendance, at least during last year, was not essential. More so in this course than in any other in the department, the duplication of outside work by class-room work is conducive to boredom.

Several field trips to such gruesome institutions as the State Hospital at Tewksbury, in addition to being perhaps the most valuable item in the course, also provide a welcome diversion. The text-books are numerous, the assignments lengthy but there has been no course paper.

Just at this ebb period in industry, the subject of poverty is especially pertinent, but a man who expects to loll leisurely in the library glancing at pictures of idiots, imbeciles, morons and thyroid sufferers will get a jolt in a very short time. Even, poverty can be prosaic, and the administration of a wel- fare society when presented with a sober lack of expression and in intricately balanced sentences does not encourage strict attention