The Rake's Conveyor

The results of the recent Student Council poll on Saturday attendance were rather startling. Although thirty percent of those polled stated that they had not cut a Saturday class in the last six weeks, an equal number had cut two or more classes within the same period. And probably a great many students were so wary of the whole thing that they just did not vote.

As easy as it is to toss off Saturday cuts as another evidence of Harvard individualism, the problem goes deeper than this. Cutting classes is like drinking or dope; it starts innocuously enough, and usually on the weekend. For example, a naive undergraduate finds he would like to go home to his sister's wedding, and as fate would have it, the event falls on a Saturday. Feeling very guilty, he nevertheless goes home and has a wonderful time, and strangely enough wakes up Monday morning with no guilt complex at all. The next weekend he decides to sleep through his Saturday classes, and the next he goes off to Vassar. His progress is painfully clear. Originally a no-cutter, he has been drawn down and has the habit. He has become a compulsive Saturday cutter.

If the numbers of this irresponsible though pitiable band increase, Saturday lecturers will be speaking to empty lecture halls. Not only is this disconcerting to the lecturer, but the acoustics in the big lecture halls are not very good when nobody is in them, and the echoes would be frightful. It is clear, then, that class cutting must be stopped and stopped quickly.

Opinions vary on how long it would take to construct a conveyor belt system between all the college rooms and class buildings, but this would be the logical answer to Saturday attendance. Proctors and resident tutors would be in charge of setting their charges on the belt and tagging them with the correct class tag. A conductor, preferably a Crimson Key or Student Council member, would push off riders at the appropriate place.

Within the class rooms, chairs would be equipped with lights which flashed on when the assigned seat was occupied. With this double check those who might have hidden under their bed or in the closet would be caught and promptly disciplined. Nobody would suffer; the lecturers could be guaranteed a peak audience and proper acoustics. But most important of all, the University could take pride in stopping the serpent-tongued cutting habit before it could start.