Sensible people have long recognized that Harvard's chief contribution to education lies in its service as a trade school, catering to the practical and necessary vocations rather than to those fit only for scholars in ivory towers. But the recent burning of a Mather Hall bulletin board has pointed up one glaring deficiency in the training program. Two dollar fines will never "make 150 detectives in Mather"; crime-tracing instruction is necessary.

How many of the junior G-Men, for example, know how to lift a decent fingerprint from a dirty fragment of glass? Certainly very few--and fewer still could trace the box of matches found beneath a charred board back to the store where it was purchased.

With the student sleuths so grossly inept, the University would be foolish to spend its three hundred dollars to rebuild wooden bulletin boards in Mather. It could better use this sum to run a short course in detective-science, teaching young criminologists how to discover who burned the notice boards.

The money spent for training would repay the University rich dividends, for the dragnet could assist in solving other perennial problems which plague the College. It could help enforce University parking regulations, and turn in students who underline their library books.

In examinations the student detectives could most convincingly prove their value. The trained snoopers might serve as exam proctors, saving the University thousands of dollars a year. And with the saving in the first year, the Mather bulletin boards could be rebuilt in bronze: shiny, handsome, and indestructible.