Scantily-Clad '52s, Rowers Battle Finals in Absentia

At 6 a.m. this morning two freshmen clad only in dressing gowns will take a last glance at their Military Science 1 notes, and will retire to the drawing room of an apartment high above Park Avenue in New York to take their final exam, the same final which their classmates will sweat out in Memorial Hall at 9:15 a.m.

The two freshmen are among about 70 students who will have taken finals away from Cambridge this exam period by the time the last bluebooks are collected this afternoon.

Sixty of the absentees are members of Crimson crews, which are training on the Thames River near New London, Connecticut, for the races there against Yale on Friday, June 24. The remaining handful have been permitted to take their exams away because they have been able to persuade Registrar Kennedy that they have very special reasons for doing so.

Mexico, California

The two freshmen, for example, had booked passage to Europe months ago on a boat which will leave at 10 a.m. today. Other absentees include a geologist, who took an exam last week in Mexico City, and a freshman in the NROTC Program who took his History I final in California because the Navy ordered him to take the Pacific summer training cruise, which started from San Francisco yesterday.

As a general rule an exam in a certain subject given away must start at precisely the same moment as the same exam begins in Cambridge. For this reason crew coach Tom Bolles, who is in charge of proctoring finals in 30 subjects for his charges in New London, has had to build his whole practice program around the exam schedule, planning rowing only early in the morning and late in the afternoon.

Four-Hour Time Lag

It was lucky for the man in California that the History I exam was scheduled in the afternoon. This meant that he could take the exam on the West Coast at 10:15 a.m. Monday, while he would have had to take it at 5:15 a.m. if it had been scheduled in the morning here.

Any Mil. Sci. I students who might entertain the idea of trying to establish contact with the boys taking the exam early this morning in New York will be disappointed. The Columbia grad student who will proctor the exam is under strict orders not to let his charges out of his sight until he has accompanied them to their boat.