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"Have we no longer the sense of individuality?" asks the Alumni Bulletin in a recent editorial attacking the change of name last year of the Senior Spread to the Senior Dance.
"Either we care for our traditions and tend them, or we don't" the article continues. "Thousands of schools and colleges in this country have dances every year: Harvard has a spread."
The writer deplores the passing of several names that have given the University individuality in the past but have disappeared along with the institutions they stood for among them Bloody Monday, and Med. Fec. But there is no excuse for allowing the Spread to go when it still exists, the writer feels.
What's in a Name?
That the reasons for the change were "Commercial" is all the more cause for the "tremor of indignation" which affected the alumni when they heard the news, he continues.
"A spread involved dancing if has involved dancing since the days of the cotillion)." the Bulletin argues, us tongue in its cheek, "and more people would come to a dance if you called it by its spade name. All of which is precious argument. No one ever went to a spread expecting a Punch and Judy show."
The editorial ends with a plea for the Spread, calling it "still as much of the present as Lampy, the Crime, the Coop, the Pudding, the Freshman Jubilee, or Rinchart."
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