A little common sense applied to the subject of their crew should convince the freshman class that the time to subscribe to their crew is now, and not at the last minute before the race. For the past few years there has arisen towards the end of the season the question as to whether the freshman crew should or should not go to New London. The reason for all the doubt lay in the empty treasury. The manager could not send the crew down to New London because he did not have the money to pay for their stay there; and moreover, what it still more important, he was not allowed to send his crew down on credit and incur debts. The consequence was that the crew was in doubt about about its being able to row their race until the manager got together at the last moment enough money to pay expenses.

If the present freshman class is as short sighted as the few previous classes have been, the same trouble is apt to arise this year. There is still about a thousand dollars to be raised before the tenth of June. If the class is unwise it will hold back its support, the question will come to a point and have to be put squarely then just as it is now, that if the thousand dollars are not raised the crew cannot go to New London. Then while the managers are slaving about the class trying to get enough money, the crew will be waiting in Cambridge and losing days of valuable practice at New London, practice which may mean to them the difference between victory and defeat. This delay might just as well be avoided by providing the funds now. The class wants to send its crew down to the race, the crew is bound to win and has a good chance to do so, and the class will sooner or later make up its mind to send it. As we have shown, it had much better be sooner than later.

A great deal of the responsibility of the success or failure of a crew's finances lies with the collectors. It is hard to expect a man to give five dollars unless he is asked for it, and it is the duty of the collectors to ask for it, and ask for it urgently. We cannot impress upon them too strongly the need of immediate, energetic action. On them depends to a great degree the success of their crew.

Like The Crimson? We deliver, straight to your inbox.