At the recent meeting of the New York Harvard Club, it was resolved that an effort be made to have Latin cease to be the official language of the university, and to have the commencement programs and quinquennial catalogue printed in our own language. Much as we favor classical education, we believe that the change advocated by the Harvard Club is a wise one, at least as far as the quinquennial catalogue is concerned. The usefulness of that valuable work would be much increased if it were printed in a language in which a few of us are moderately versed. If the change can not be made, we would suggest to some enterprising student to get out a "translation," which, however, we fear would supplant the original.
As far as the commencement exercises are concerned, we do not feel so strongly. It does not matter very much in what language the president tells us to come forward for our degrees, so long as we get those valuable pieces of parchment. We would suggest, however, that it would add much to the impressiveness of the occasion to have the pronunciation used a little more in accordance with that taught in the university, for the sake of consistency at least.
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