The CRIMSON will open its annual spring competition for freshmen, sophomores, and juniors at 7:30 p.m. tonight and tomorrow in the CRIMSON building at 14 Plympton St. A separate competition for Radcliffe candidates will start at the same time.

Beer will be served to all who attend these first two meetings, and CRIMSON editors will explain the workings of the paper and the advantages of participating in it.

They will explain that the competition is not really a competition in the sense that you will not be competing against your fellow candidates. Instead, you will be attempting to measure up to a theoretically fixed standard which all CRIMSON editors must satisfy.

They will tell you that the tales you have heard concerning the difficulty of the competition are grossly exaggerated. They will explain that any student who can budget his time reasonably well can get through the comp without undue hardship.

They will tell those of you who are interested in grades that your marks will not necessarily drop if you enter the comp. Indeed, candidates often find that their marks go up as they learn to work more rapidly and more efficiently. A survey taken of editors' grades a few years ago indicated that the CRIMSON ranked second only to Phi Beta Kappa among undergraduate organizations.

But most of all, they will extol the advantages of working on the CRIMSON. They will tell you that a CRIMSON competition serves even better than Gen Ed A to improve your ability to express your thoughts simply and clearly.

They will also tell you that the CRIMSON can be a lot of fun. They will describe epic struggles with the journalists from Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, and others. And they will describe the everyday joys of working together on a group activity with a tangible product appearing daily the next morning.

But they will say all this much more explicitly, and probably much more convincingly, at the two introductory meetings. If you're at all interested, it might be wise to drop around and see what it' all about.