A Key to Hospitality

Following the well-tested examples of Dartmouth, Princeton, and assorted other colleges, the Student Council has researched and organized and argued and come up with a full set of plans for a new organization, which it chooses to call "The Crimson Key Society." Ideas of setting up some sort of welcoming committee for visiting athletes and other worthies began to pop up back during the late lamented football season. So, in its usual thorough but plodding manner, the Council gathered together a four-man committee, which worked long and hard for more than a month and finally produced a constitution for the projected Crimron Key, which needs only Dean's Office approval to go into immediate operation.

Perhaps the committee worked just a trifle too hard. The constitution that has been fashioned is, if nothing else, a marvel of complexity. In three concise sentences it lists the Society's purposes--to be hosts for visiting firemen, to orient new freshmen, and to perform other hospitable services. These, indeed, are worthy aims. But, rather than setting up a small, workable committee to put them into practice, the Council's group has drafted a long and involved hierarchy of committees. The actual work is to be done by a fairly large group of sophomore and junior candidates; formation of "policy" will be in the hands of a gigantic 37-man executive group, which will be subdivided into cabinet, senior associate group, membership committee, and committee on assignments. All this seems rather complicated and unnecessary, for merely welcoming a few athletes on weekends or showing around a new freshman class once a year.

But the fact that the projected Crimson Key seems somewhat overburdened with committees and sub-committees does not invalidate its basic merit. The functions it intends to serve have long been sadly neglected, and if the Key performs its job well, it will have been worth the efforts of organization. It seems debatable, too, whether the Crimson Key Society will ever attain the position of prestige and honor that its proponents have outlined, and which similar societies hold in other colleges. Nevertheless, it is an experiment worth trying.