319

To the editors of 319, Harvard is a place where on does four things: shoot pool, drink, dance, and hang around the common room looking for votes. For pool shooters, they have provided detailed photographs of almost every public table in the University. Every party, every dance, must have been dutifully attended by a Yearbook photographer. And each of the eight House committees managed to summon a quorum and look properly awake for its constituents. But for the nonpool player who learned years ago that college students drink, attend parties, and politick, 319 has very little to offer.

Indeed, except for the fact that dormitories are referred to as Houses (but the Yard is still the campus), and co-eds are mostly segregated into one section called "Radcliffe," there is not much to indicate that the editors of 319 have spent the last twelve months in Cambridge instead of, say, in Williamstown or Evanston, Illinois. This is too bad, for a lot of things happen in Cambridge which do not happen exactly the same way in other universities and which the Harvard graduate may want to remember. There is an academic life, for instance. In all of 319 there is not one picture of a lecture or a tutorial session. Except for a section near the beginning labeled "Faculty," and various academic distinctions after the names of certain seniors, there is no real evidence that the university is not one gigantic pub. The fact that retiring Samuel Eliot Morison had his name over another man's picture lends a convincing ring to this impression.

There are many ways in which the yearbook could better have described the Harvard scene. More attention could have been paid to the dividers between the book's sections. While a few are fairly good photographically, none are particularly meaningful in terms of the life of Harvard College, as distinct from Any College. Instead of wasting full pages on organizations which meet once or twice a year and are interesting only to their own members, the same space could have been used for, say, a well-illustrated feature article on the problem of keeping Harvard what it is in the face of critical overcrowding, or photographic coverage of some of the outstanding visiting professors who have been here this year. The Rev George A. Buttirck's first term in Memorial Church for example, went entirely un-noticed. These are only a few suggestions. But more insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the University, and less of the Pollyanna approach that in every day in every way Harvard is growing bigger and better, would have made for more interesting reading.

The production of 319 is no better than its contents. Its writing is on the whole wooden and filled with cliches. There is a conspicuous lack of a copy desk. Not only do a few individual articles directly contradict one another, but there is far too much editorialization, particularly in the articles about undergraduate organizations. And words such as ensconced, collegian, frosh, and soph, should never, ever, see print. A few articles, however, showed a real attempt to get away from the rigid confines imposed by the nature of a yearbook. Those on the chess and bridge clubs and (but for one inexcusable line) the Band are quite good. One interesting innovation in this year's book is the inclusion of outstanding pieces from other publications. It might well become a regular feature.

The book's photographs, with a few pleasing exceptions such as the Dudley lockers, the Dunster House bench, and the fencing picture, share the woodenness of its prose. More pictures should be taken with natural light or diffused flash, instead of simply with a flashgun mounted on a camera and aimed straight at the victim. While Draper Hill's cartoon House shields are quite well drawn, Gaylen C. Bergren's drawings of the House Masters suffer from the quite serious defect of not even resembling at least half of the subjects.

It seems that about the only things that can be said for 319 is that it came out on schedule, that if you are a senior it has your picture in it (though your name may be mis-spelled), and that it has articles on all sports and activities. Aside from its limited function as a record an das a class-book, there is not much else to recommend.