Silent Spring

The CRIMSON, concerned for some time about the alarmingly unpleasant smell which has hovered over Tercentenary Theatre (the New Yard) for the past month, has now received the following unsettling communication from a State Inspector of Lawns.

"Who would think," he writes, "that there could be anything sinister about an acorn and a cup of tea? It certainly surprised me when I discovered that an unexpected combination of the two was causing all the trouble in the Harvard Yard. Last fall, you may remember, Buildings and Grounds began its well-publicized campaign to wipe out the rabid squirrels by scattering poisoned acorns around the elm trees. The deranged squirrels, they reasoned, would overlook the incongruity and bury the nuts for future use. Then, when the Spring thaws came, the animals would dig the acorns, eat them, and expire.

"Everything proceeded according to plan until Central Kitchens began surreptitiously dumping their entire stock of tainted tea at various places around the campus during the March rains. One of those places was the Yard, where the poisoned nuts lay buried. The noxious bacteria in the tea found the toxic substance in the acorns a perfect nutriment. The odoriferous gas you have inquired about is a little-known by-product of their metabolism, encountered only when the bacterial colonies are able to grow without restraint. I'll wager there won't be much green in the Yard for Commencement Exercises this Spring!"

There is nothing funny here. Two giant agencies, each acting independently of the other, have created an olfactory nuisance of no mean dimensions. The departments responsible must see to it that they purge the University of this stench in its nostrils.