Diggery Dock

(Ed. Note--The Crimson does not necessarily endures opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters, but under special condition, at the request of the writer, names will be withheld.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

The customary four hour examinations upon which the entire year's work at the Law School depends, are apparently regarded as insufficient test to qualify students for promotion. A new and more stringent means of testing the student's calibre has been devised to supplement the nervous and mental strain of the present system, namely, the requirement that student work under fire--or more literally, in the immediate presence of a roaring steamshovel. Uninterruptedly, save for one-half hour at noon, it puffs and snorts and hisses forty feet from the open windows. No longer, aparently, can one get through the Law School by merely answering satisfactorily ten questions in four hours; he must show that he can one get through the Law School by merely answering satisfactorily ten questions in four hours; he must show that he can do it in the midst of a terrific din, created by those most distracting of all noises, the jerking roars and groans of a steamshovel. If this were intended as a preparation for the students in case they should work in the noisy down town of our busy cities, it is a very admirable one.

There is another side to the picture, however. There are many students and undoubtedly the large majority who cannot do their best or anywhere near their best, in the presence of such a distraction. At one extreme, of course, are those phlegmatic, cool and collected people who are unaffected by such noises; but they are in the distinct minority. At the other extreme are those who are very greatly affected, particularly when they are keyed up to a high nervous tension for taking examinations that mean everything to them. It seems that this new test places a premium upon temperament rather than mental and legal ability.

Such an examination or test, coming as it does all at once on top of the others is palpably unfair; the students should be notified in the catalog, so that if they are of the temperament which makes them susceptible to violent and tumultuous distractions during examinations they would know that the Harvard Law School was not the place for them.

Why must this new test be? Are two weeks excavation at this time as important as fair examinations to 1500 students who have only this single opportunity to show what they know, par-percent of whom will return next year? ticularly to those 700 first year men, 40 per cent of whom will return next year? Robert F. Spindell. 1L.