Registers by Registration

Freshman Registers are like 25-year-old debutantes: by the time they finally come out, their faces are already familiar. Because the chief purpose of the Register is to acquaint members of a large class, it should extend its introductions early in the term. At many colleges, registers are printed during the summer, greeting incoming freshmen in September. Since Harvard Year-book Publications distributes the Registers in December, however, the red books lose most of their value.

Pictures and information, the two ingredients of the Register, are both available in the spring before each freshman year. The Publications staff need not spend weeks photographing freshmen, since the College requires a picture from each applicant. Most of these are studio photographs, superior to the rushed, assembly-line pictures snapped at the Dunster Street office.

Entrance applications also call for the same biographical material--sports, hobbies, field of concentration--which is printed in the Registers. In May, the Board of Admissions announces its choices and receives acceptance cards from the entering class. Using the pictures and facts from the accepted applications, publication of the Register should begin at this time.

Logically selling Registers at registration, the Publications staff would increase both the sales and efficiency of the book. Due to its tardy winter debut, the Register now is not a guide for freshmen, but only a delayed memento of their first term in college.