It Happens Every Spring

Like a primitive tribe preparing for a spring bachanale, each freshman class works itself into a frenzy over the Great Event--the Smoker. And each year the Smoker is barely more than a sloppy orgy. Tuesday night, there were several improvements, over past rites; more beer was sloshed around Memorial Hall than ever before, the freshman football team, dressed for the occasion in white waiter's jackets, managed to rough up a few disorderlies and quite a few more gaping bystanders. When all this fun was over, a prankster's bomb exploded in a freshman's face, critically injuring him.

Every year Administration officials breathe more easily when the Smoker staggers to a halt. Although they are never satisfied with the Smoker, they feel it is worth the risk despite the yearly threat of injury and serious property destruction. It seems, they have said, a good psychological defense against the exuberance that freshmen feel when they find that three C's and a D are not so hard to get after all-that same exuberance which leads to riots and bomb throwing in the Yard. It was an attempt to substitute foam flecked Brotherhood and Good Fellowship for town-gown fights.

It has never worked. Perennially there is some minor riot; this year there was a serious injury. Instead of Good Fellowship, sharp fist fights break out as clique rubs elbow with clique. And records of past springs shown no evidence that the Smoker stops the class from other, less organized, rioting.

The one good thing about the Smoker is that it can be easily killed. Unlike other traditional functions it is born anew each year, with the Student Council as a watchful midwife. If the Council were to abolish the Smoker the class of 1958 would never miss what it never knew about. The Smoker has never fulfilled its questionable function, and the affair Tuesday night hinted forcibly the great harm that can result.