QUERY: How many times a year does the average Harvard alumnus receive circulars requesting money for worthy causes?

ANSWER: Very often.

QUERY: How many times does he throw these circulars into the fireplace unanswered?

ANSWER: More often than he pays.

This situation is practically universal. So when Harvard oarsmen went about soliciting money for a fund, they hit upon a new scheme which they hoped would be more successful than the normal system. A group, unique in the University sports scene, known as The Friends of Harvard Rowing," was formed to provide an annual fund to be used for rowing expenditures apart from those in the regular H.A.A. budget.

It was hoped that the feeling developed by a group membership would give the subscribers a certain personal attachment and responsibility which was absent in the ordinary solicitation. An annual gift to the "Friends" would be more like paying club does than kicking into a huge anonymous pet where it didn't really matter whether you gave or net. Here the feeling of membership in an association would lend an extra personal fillip to the request.

And apparently it has. The "Friends" have collected over $3,000 already, and the letters went out in November. No goal has been set, but the 19-man committee in charge of the administration of the associations hopes to build up a fund which will be large enough to provide a new shell every year for the varsity ($2,000), occasionally send the crew to Houley or to the Olympic trials, and meet any other "unusual expenses."

This year the only contemplated expenditure is for the Olympic trials, to be held early in July at Worcester. In any event, nothing will be spent until after consultation with the crew coach and athletic director. The H.A.A. will continue to meet the regular maintenance expenses, of course. (The present H.A.A. budget is about $75,000.)

The fund is not to recruit and subsidize athletes for crew, either--the Crimson hardly needs that, with ever 1,000 students rowing every year--but for capital equipment and trips. The coaching and administration will naturally be left up to the coaches and H.A.A., too.

The "Friends" are made up not only of former Crimson crewmen, but also of undergraduate oarsmen, and any men, graduates or not, or women who are interested in Harvard rowing.

Financial help from old oarsmen is by no means new. In the early years of Harvard rowing, the sport was supported entirely by donations from crew enthusiasts, and the rowing alumni have traditionally been one of the strongest graduate groups.

In fact, the University Treasurer has yet to purchase a shell. Robert F. Herrick '90, crew captain in 1889, was the greatest contributor to Crimson crews while he lived, and when he died in 1942 he left a substantial bequest to the H.A.A. for crew.

Though Herrick's spirit may be behind the "Friends," Francis L. Higginson '00 has been the physical leader of this new movement. Mainly through his efforts this association has been set up to organize and direct the alumni funds, and, he hopes, to increase them. Now, in this, Harvard's 100th year of rowing, the loyalty of all oarsmen, past and present, can find an outlet; and by means of this new psychological approach, the proverb "once a crewman, always a crewman" should bear financial fruit.