News
Amid Boston Overdose Crisis, a Pair of Harvard Students Are Bringing Narcan to the Red Line
News
At First Cambridge City Council Election Forum, Candidates Clash Over Building Emissions
News
Harvard’s Updated Sustainability Plan Garners Optimistic Responses from Student Climate Activists
News
‘Sunroof’ Singer Nicky Youre Lights Up Harvard Yard at Crimson Jam
News
‘The Architect of the Whole Plan’: Harvard Law Graduate Ken Chesebro’s Path to Jan. 6
[We invite all men in the University to submit communications on subjects of timely interest.]
To the Editors of the CRIMSON:
Your editorial on the choice of ideals for undergraduate magazines, though justly censuring the existing waste of effort, fails to take account of a purpose more vital than that of encouraging undergraduate writing. This purpose is to serve the function for our University which the professional magazines do for the nation.
Is the College awake to itself? Is the University run for the Faculty or for the students? What are other institutions doing which we might well adopt? Is our lazy satisfaction warranted? A live magazine, such as Harvard has the ability and the duty to maintain, should answer these questions, not in a spirit of chronic protest, but with the idea of arousing undergraduate interest in College affairs other than football, and of expressing this opinion for the service of the authorities. One of the undergraduate papers is already committed to this policy, another has the equally important aim of preserving the best literary work of the College, the third attempts both. Some consolidation might be desirable and possible; but complete consolidation would probably mean the abandoning of the more journalistic functions, and, as has happened in the past, new papers would arise to meet this ever-present need. A more feasible solution of our difficulties might be to cut down the number of issues of the College papers, making the monthlies quarterlies, and the biweeklies monthlies. But till Harvard becomes perfect the undergraduate magazines cannot have one common aim, to "best perpetuate the literary traditions of this place"; some of them should properly flash a light on the traditions themselves. F. COOKE '10.
Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter.