WAKE UP AND THINK

With altogether commendable high-mindedness and altruistic fervor our contemporary "The Monthly" has come out with its thought for the month to the effect that since "faculty men are not well qualified to advise undergraduates" the burden of Freshman advising ought to be shifted to seniors in college. It is argued with all the freshness of a spring morning that seniors of high standing, "supervised and paid", would prove more valuable to the Yardlings than the present advisers who are widely admitted to be inadequate. But although no one can deny the almost criminal negligence that the officials of Harvard have bestowed on the problem and their utter failure to move toward a solution, no matter how many voices have cried out in protest, it does not follow at all that seniors would be any more capable to solve Freshman problems than the men who are supposed to shoulder that task.

If the University is to make any real progress in cleaning the grimy spot of Freshman Advising from its escutcheon, something more better than seniors, who are interested in their own problems, out of touch with the Yard, and unused to winding their way through all the highways and byways of the University catalogue, will have to be found. It was suggested in these columns in February that a system of proctor-advisers be instituted,--the men to live in or near the Yard, to be given no more than twenty advisees a person, to have enough authority to make their influence felt, and to be paid an adequate stipend for their services. Since February the University has not budged an inch forward. But it is as true today as in the winter months that if the Freshmen are to have adequate advising, it must be done by independent faculty men, rather than by seniors more interested in their own scholastic problems than in the trials and tribulations of youngsters who follow in their trail three years later.