The Country Club Set

It is traditional at Harvard exams that students suffering the tortures of the damned be permitted an occasional respite to visit the lavatory or partake in the pleasures of a cigarette. Apparently, however, the Registrar's Office has neglected to inform this year's proctors of these basic human rights.

On at least two occasions during the first four days of exams, proctors have enforced astonishingly idiotic rules concerning leaving the room. With three proctors and some 150 students in Geological Lecture Room on Friday morning, only one student at a time was allowed to leave for any reason because smoking is prohibited in any part of the building and the head proctor didn't want to make one of his warm-blooded colleagues stand out in the cold. Later, during the last half hour, he discovered that he could station a man inside and let him oversee his charges through the glass door. Yesterday afternoon, with a similar number of proctors in Emerson D, only one student at a time could go to the lavatory and all departures for smoking were stopped fifteen minutes after the authorities had first granted permission.

Both of these incidents represent radical departures from past policy. And the resultant waiting in line represents preposterous infringements on what is anyway a very short three hours.

The Office of Tests has informed the Crimson that their policy continues now as ever before: after the first hour and a half, students are permitted to come and go as they please, with cigarette smokers under the surveillance of a proctor. The Harvard examination system, according to its spokesman, is still "no country club."

But some amenities are permitted, and the Office of Tests should remind its erring proctors.