JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sat, Research into congressional committee preferences and assignments has been notably one-sided, with little attention given to the Senate. Using information from senators' letters and memos, this paper analyzes 290 committee requests made by Democrats from 1953 to 1971. The relative attractiveness of committees for freshmen and more senior members is reported along with information on the reasons behind committee desirability. The materials on member motivations permit development of a classification scheme for committees. Multivariate analyses reveal that seniority is the variable strongly related to success in getting assignments that have been requested. Seven other independent variables that have been used by scholars studying House committee assignments are not related to success among Senate competitors.