[We invite all men in the University to submit communications on subjects of timely interest.]

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Many critics of the new system of allotment in the Senior dormitories declare that it is not democratic, in that it does not encourage so much as the old system the forming of new friendships in Senior year. The objection seems to me to have little weight. The friendships that are most prized in later years are those formed, not by the accidental rooming in the same entry, but by the influence of a common interest, or work in a common activity. In the two and a half years that I have lived in the Yard, I have failed to discover that the hap-hazard system has justified itself in any very marked degree: for it has in most cases fostered only acquaintances, whereas community of interest gives rise to friendships. There is nothing very snobbish about finding one man more congenial than another; and rooming in the same entry with a man implies a certain degree of intimacy. It is not to a man's credit if at the end of Junior year he ceases to make friends; but he surely has a right by that time to prefer as sharers of his entry those men whom he knows to be congenial, rather than the same number of men who may or may not prove so. Moreover, the new system in giving groups of friends the opportunity to live together, does not prevent men who have fewer friends from taking their chances of finding agreeable neighbors, as in the past. Their chances are the same as before.

The new system is not perfect.--few systems are without a flaw. But there can be little doubt that it places the emphasis on the right kind of friendship, the kind that grows from common interests, and not from more contiguity. JUNIOR.