Once More the Ministry

Now that everybody has to file a study card at "75 Mount Auburn St." everybody will be qualified to join in what must be the most productive of local sports. Three veteran observers of Cambridge's most striking innovation have lately added their voices to that of the little old lady from Hazen's.

1. "The view from my window this year puts me in mind of a passage from George Orwell's 1984:

The Ministry of [Health] was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous [cubical] structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, three hundred meters into the air. . . . The Ministry . . . contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level and corresponding ramifications below. Completely did [it] dwarf the surrounding architecture. . . . The Ministry of [Health] was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. It was a place impossible to enter except through a maze of barbed wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barrlers were reamed by gorilla-faced [workmen] in black uniforms.

2. "The elevators again. You and a psychiatrist step inside, and press buttons. You wait, and look at each other suspiciously. Suddenly the psych screams "these goddam things" and starts jumping up and down. You wonder if he is some kind of nut. Breathing heavily, he explains that the only way to get upstairs is by jumping."

3. "Well, nobody's perfect, and maybe these things will straighten out. The junta is full of foresight. Why, they planned elevators so large that even a hospital bed could fit into them--no trouble at all. Around that time, somebody figured that Harvard students were getting bigger all the time, and ordered a new shipment of extra-large beds which..."

The CRIMSON, you may be sure, joyously welcomes further contributions to the sport.