With Malice Aforethought

The incredible bombing incident at Elsie's Wednesday night cannot be excused on the grounds of the presence of Spring. Nor can it be dismissed as another manifestation of the fact that boys will be boys.

The behavior of the two students--they were students, not townies--is, we hope, not typical. Harvard has not yet begun to form teen-age gangs after the manner of New York, but the bombing, if it was part of an organized club initiation or if it was just the brain-child of two idiots, has all the attributes of a teen-age mentality.

Presumably, the total irresponsibility of the action will not go unpunished. The University tolerates or overlooks a number of manifestations of student irrationality, but in this case leniency scarcely seems in order. To find the two students involved and to treat them in more or less the same fashion they treated their victims seems the only way to bring them to their senses. Hopefully, one lesson in good manners is all they will need.