Crimson Key Finishes 1st Year as Welcome Mat

If Harvard were playing the University of Geneva in quoits, the Crimson Key would have a man on the docks to meet the visiting team. The College's human welcome mat does everything from providing a uniformed detail to guard the Band's bass drum during football games to helping Freshmen choose their courses.

One year old this month, the organization was hatched last year by a group of students who felt that the University was being a very bad host to its visitors and needed an official group to welcome the visiting firemen.

Originally, the Key was modeled closely on the pattern of the Dartmouth and Princeton Key Societies which include many of the features of a social club. The Student Council objected strongly to the scheme, and after much debate, turned out a compromise constitution.

Policy-making was left in the hands of an unwieldy group of representatives from undergraduate teams and organizations, the work was done by a group of voteless "associates," while the real control rested with a nine man cabinet. But in spite of its organizational straight-jacket, which the new constitution attempts to do away with, the Key has accomplished an extraordinary amount in its first year. It has been bigger, better, and more active than any other Ivy League Key Society.

Ship to Shore

The Society's first accomplishment was a ship-to-shore broadcast of the Eastern Sprints regatta last May by walkie-talkie from the official launch. The reports of the races were relayed to the crowd at the finish line over a public address system.

The Key did not really mobilize until the fall, however. After some initial confusion, its Freshman Orientation Committee joined the many other agencies offering advice and consolation to the bewildered Freshmen. It opened an information booth in the Union, planted members in Mem Hall to answer questions at registration, and conducted guided tours of the University.

The Key's big job, of course, was taking care of visiting athletes. With only a few exceptions, such as local teams, representatives met every athletic squad that has played at Harvard this year, including ones that showed up at 7 a.m. A Key member would pick the team up at the railroad station and stay with it as long as he was needed, supplying maps, nickles for phone calls, and sometimes even dates for the visitors.

Questionnaires

The manager of each visiting team gets an elaborate questionnaire from the Key about two weeks before the game that asks about the players' whims and wishes, covering almost all things except perhaps whether they prefer whiskey to gin.

The Key's efforts have not gone unnoticed. Other colleges have praised the new society: the Dartmouth football manager wrote that his team "had never been taken care of so well."

But the Key's work is not confined to mothering Freshmen and welcoming athletes. Its non-athletic committee attends to a variety of other University visitors. Even Elis qualify; over the Yale Weekend, the Key set up an elaborate information bureau in Wadsworth House to help the confused.

Besides this, members of the Key make up a volunteer guide brigade to show the University to visiting functionaries, who this year have ranged from a Brazilian radio commentator to the Chancellor of the University of New Zealand.

Bilingual Guides

When foreigners come, the Key tries to supply a guide from the same country or one who can speak the visitor's native language.

Although Key members admit that the glass flowers begin to pall on the thirtieth trip through, they like the job. And according to reports from the office of David M. Little '18, Secretary to the University, where the tours are arranged, the visitors are highly enthusiastic about them.

Another of the non-athletic committee's jobs is finding berths in the Houses for visiting debaters. The committee's plans were badly shaken once this winter when the University of Pennsylvania showed up with a girl on its teams. Some last minute scurrying got the lady a bed in an off-campus house at Radcliffe. She apparently liked the Annex, because she stayed a week. In the meantime, a McGill team arrived to debate Harvard, and the Pennsylvania lass struck up acquaintance with one of the Canadians. When last heard from she was on her way to Montreal for a long weekend.

Glamor, however, is not a constant feature of the Key's work. Most of the jobs are routine, and are rewarded at best by the gratitude of the visitors or a free pass to the game. It is a tribute to the enthusiasm of the candidates and members this year that the Key has done the work so well.