Crimson Proposes Allowing Servicemen in Courses Here

Harvard classes, which will be sparsely populated by civilian students this summer, should be filled by allowing servicemen to audit, the Crimson suggested in an editorial Wednesday morning. Men on leave may be "hungry for something besides bars and burlesque," and could be admitted as visitors to the lectures, the undergraduate paper maintains.

About 800 civilian students are expected in the College this summer, it is pointed out, and many classes will therefore find great teachers lecturing to a handful of listeners. The gap could be filled by servicemen, who might get actual tickets to specific classes through the USO or a similar agency. In this way the number of men at a given class would not get out of hand, and no man would get to more than his share of classes.

Sampling Works

Random sampling of different classes has already been tried and found workable at Harvard, according to the undergraduates. The Nieman fellows, journalists who are at Harvard for a year, often do this, as well as other graduate students. Teachers have not had to alter their usual lectures, and in certain course the additional experience that older men have had has added to their appreciation.

Harvard would thus be making a valuable indirect contribution to the war effort, ends the editorial--"helping to keep alive the vestiges of the humanities and giving necessarily regimented thought a chance to free itself, if only for a morning."