If the first function of a yearbook is to come out, the second is to come out good. For two years running the Yearbook people have given tradition a healthy kick by producing their publication on time; previous annuals tended to get lost at the bindery or disappear in the mails. Now, with its publication problem beaten, the Yearbook can profitably start worrying a little more about what it publishes.

People seem to buy their yearbook to serve as sort of a slick-paper, permanently covered scrapbook of a class and its stretch at the College. Pick up 315 and thumb through it. You will find yourself pointing out your friends, discovering the name of the man across the hall, and looking for your own picture in the back of the Jubilee or in a crowd of 500 people around the Lampoon's steps. This is the present, contemporary function of 315. In a few years your reading focus may switch somewhat. 315 will become a reference volume, dedicated to the proposition that association in the Glee Club may lead to appropriation for a job. Past that, 315 will probably turn out to be a large and heavy object for the edification of grandchildren.

This means that 315 should primarily concern itself with pictures of people, which it tries to do, and with names of people, which it doesn't. Nobody really cares what the Society for Minority Rights did in 1950-51; they do and will care about who was in the Society. Here 315 falls down. It has page after page of far from sprightly text on the activities of myriad teams and organizations; far too little about who was in those organizations. This policy carries over to its pictures. The "firing squad" photographs of groups shoulder-to-shoulder are largely gone, a shrewd move esthetically but a bad one for a scrapbook: it will seriously reduce the book's reference and grandchild value. When 315 does break down and run a firing squad, the names of the people are carefully omitted.

Technically, the book has some very good photographs and some very fussy layout. The big photograph of a bruised and tired Johnny West in the locker room after a game is one of the finest ever to turn up in a local publication. Many of the other pictures, however, tend to wander around 315's pages so that they and the text frequently get lost in unrelated rectangles of photo-engraving and type. The text itself suffers from the vagaries of its many contributors; it is laced with gags like "Sergeant 'Sock it' Toomey." There is an inordinate number of misspelled names, an uncaptioned and isolated photograph of the CRIMSON's managing editor biting his nails, a complicated poll about the amount of time faculty members would like to spend teaching, and a simple and funny poll about the amount of time students, eat, drink, and go out. It is like all other yearbooks. It still has your roommate's picture in it. If your are a senior you might just as well go out and buy it.