Solution

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I am glad to see that the CRIMSON has spotlighted the debating situation at Harvard, but your suggestions (arguing topics of current interest, cross questioning, and audience decision) have all been tried.

Last spring in a debate against Yale (which was televised the next day) we discussed legalizing gambling one month after the Kefauver investigation. Fifteen people month after the Fefauver investigation. Fifteen people attended. We debated the Socialist Party of Boston on "Capitalism v. Socialism" in an audience decisioned, cross question debate. Fifty people appeared, forty three brought by the Socialists. Two weeks ago we debated Yale on ousting Senator McCarthy. Three people were in attendance here, seventy at Yale.

Can it be that the publicity given these debates is responsible? The Yale Dally News gave a tremendous buildup to that debate and appeared the day after with a lengthy front page article. The CRIMSON, on the other hand, gives little or no notice to our activities. In one cross question debate last year on Euthanasia we could not even get space for a notice because "there is no room."

To a debating organization which receives no constant financial backing from the university as compared with Yale's $1,000 per annum and B.U.'s $2,000, which holds over 120 debates a year to accommodate its fifty members, and which must hold 80 percent of its debates on the comparatively dull national topic in order to get opposition and practice for its members, your recommendations offer no solution at all.

Your phrase "forensic feebleness" is nice alliteration but has no application to the matter at hand. An informal debating organization which brings to Harvard Ivy League and New England championships, and which can get over 250 people out in the rain at Waltham to hear it support legalized gambling (and win), deserves more publicity and support than it now receives. Lester L. Ward '52   President,   Harvard Debate Council