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Dean Hanford's statement permitting Juniors and Seniors more latitude concerning class attendance immediately before and after the April Recess clarifies the confused situation which resulted after his previous statement on the subject before the Christmas vacation. Ambiguities have been explained, and hereafter upperclassmen can no longer take refuge behind them if in the future their record calls for an explanation to University Hall.
While it will be difficult to improve upon the solution worked out by the administrative board or to disagree that upper classmen must live up to the spirit of the law in not cutting too many classes, Mr. Hanford should have stated more simply and frankly the reasons that obviously lay behind his actions. Any one who has had to file so simple a document as a questionnaire or registration card realizes that a fairly large number of men make mistakes even on that. Still greater, then, is the chance of a goodly number of undergraduates misreading so long a statement. On the score of frankness, a bit less hocus-pocus about "not reporting absences" and a little more frankness about "permitting cuts" would add to the force of the document without changing the action of the students.
It is impossible to urge too strongly, however, that Juniors and Seniors follow Mr. Hanford's reasonable request to use moderation in their exercise of the privileges, especially as this is the first opportunity for the plan to be tried out on a fair basis. If toleration is to continue in force, those blythe spirits who insist on leaving early and returning late, must see to it that no sustained rise takes place in the general academic curve of class-cutting.
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