Harvard Savants Ignore Principles of Flood Relief While Tragedy Impends

Liquid content, in these enlightened days, is no longer regulated by statute, but only by the unbreakable laws of hydraulic pressure, and cause and effect. With these physical phenomena in mind, local savants have been recently devoting their time to solving the problem posed by the presence of so many people at the gatherings in the Yard amphitheater, gatherings many of which follow immediately upon the smatutinal cup of coffee.

It is custom born of experience that wherever two or three are gathered together, it is desirable to provide antechambers devoted to retiring, resting, washing, or seeking comfort. So in the Yard the inaccessibility of the dormitory facilities has necessitated the combination of flood control and relief work in the provision of two small rooms under the speakers stand, suitable both for members of the Harvard macroscope and for the general public.

Mathematically, however, the calculations are faulty; quality is unimpreachable, but quantity has been skimped. Taking the average age of customers as 40 years, two minutes seems the minimum time allowance necessary. The Governing Boards have only prepared for relays of sixteen. Simple calculation shows that after 24 hours, 500 guests of one classification or another, all of them impatient, will still be in line. This bids fair to delay the next event on the program.

Inasmuch as most of the underbrush has been cleared out of the Yard, no solution seems to present itself. Local potentates who lash the planned economy have certainly shown themselves incapable of intelligent foresight. One regrets that the Tercentenary Celebration could not be held in the dust Bowl, but this also seems difficult. Perhaps the next three hundred years will see the answer.