New Lecture Hall is a problem not only in its name, for many, many students have pondered over the questions: "Just when is new old?" but it offers its architectural symmetry(?) as an obstacle to the earnest undergraduate. Approaching the west basement stairway from the corner where traffic is to be dredged, the student, in a hurry of course, finds two routes possible in order to get to the stairway.

1. He may go around the hedge-surrounded grassy area in his way.

2. He may cut across the grass.

From the corner curb to the stairway via Rout 1, the student takes 17 full seconds. But, employing the illegal Routue 2, he does it in 10 flat. Seven seconds, then, are wasted because of the grass plot, an architectural Frankenstein! And even if the illicit route is taken, a hedge and a tree block speedy entrance to class.

Architecture is As Aarchitecture Does

There is an imaginary, though not unlikely situation to be drawn: a student is about to take his last final exam in New Lecture Hall basement. If he fails the exam, he will flunk out. Cramming to the last minute, he finds, as he approaches the stairway, that he has but 12 seconds left to get into the examination on time.

Will he walk around the grass plot as a decent citizen should, upholding his moral fortitude, but flunking, or will he take the criminal short cut, reaching the exam just in time? A question indeed, but should he flunk, Harvard architecture will have claimed another victim