A FORTUNATE ANNULMENT

In letting down its arbitrary bars to the use of its rooms, the Union has done a thing which will be helpful to University life and which will rebound to its own credit. The "forty per cent rule" created a monopoly on meeting space in the Union which was contrary to one of the two main objects of its existence. The rule has been of doubtful efficiency in increasing membership, and through it the Union has certainly been prevented from becoming the center of the intellectual and extra-curriculum life of the University.

But now all is changed and the Union will assume its true place as a center of University activities. True, there is one proviso which may occasion some alarm namely that the governing board "reserves especially the right to pass on all lectures and their subjects." In the past there has been a strong feeling, whether unfounded or not, that the Union has adopted a somewhat narrow and illiberal attitude in passing on prospective speakers. Some undergraduate have gotten the impression that the governing board is more occupied in guarding them against "dangerous doctrine" than in providing a broad and varied schedule of speakers; the proviso in question may accentuate this feeling. But if the governing board adopts a liberal and reasonable attitude under the present reservation nobody will gainsay its justice. In this as in the broader question of the choice of regular Union speakers, everything depends on the true liberalism of those in authority at the Union.