Butler University - Carillon / Drift Yearbook (Indianapolis, IN)

Page 28 text:

The Straight and Narrow HE title dean used to carry with it evil connotations of one sort and another. A dean was a sort of grouchy and mor- bid, albeit powerful, individual who went around doing his or her best to make college students miserable. Young ladies who stayed out late at night were sure to hear from the dean of women, and young gentlemen who couldn ' t resist the joys of frequent dissipation knew that the dean of men would be on their trail. Goodness, how times have changed! Girls nowadays dance till two or three in the morn- Mr. Putnam ing, thinking nothing of it: and if they want to smoke and in other ways show their freedom, they do so. Boys tear around town at all hours of the night in their handsome roadsters, caring little what dad. or mother, or dean, or anybody else thinks of them. And the deans themselves — well, what on earth can they do but sit back helplessly and watch the inevitable: For what can even such mighty in- dividuals as they do when the young people supposedly under their jurisdiction have been taught ever since they were teachable that every human being has a right to get out of life just what he can, and that success of any sort is to be attained only by aggressiveness? For is not aggressiveness the virtue most sought after and applauded nowa- days? The football player who rips sensationally through the opposing line, or dashes madly around left end, straight-arming all players, is cheered madly by the crowd. Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey. and Billy Sunday have more followers than Harriet Beecher Stowe ever dreamed of having. The salesman that forces the most contracts down his clients ' throats is banqueted and trophied by the home company. Deans, you are up against it! How are you going to tell a gay young crea- ture who speeds down Meridian street at sixty miles an hour in her baby blue roadster and fur coat, nonchalantly flicking ashes from her cigarette and complacently disregarding all stop signs, old people, children, and other hindrances, that she must obey certain rules and regulations? Somebody ' s got to get us out of this situa- tion. But who? How can even deans be ex- pected to inspire respect for order and law in boys and girls whose parents compete fiercely with their fellow men in the business world all day and then tune in eagerly on jazz music and prize fights at night ' Miss Buti.hr

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■S:5; =L ©g Et nr- ss.S« iS Handwriting on the Wall N the following pages, gentle reader (you are gentle, aren ' t you?), will be found, in sixteen easy lessons, an attempt to save the world via a reformed and rationalized educational system. But do not be too ready to laugh at these adolescent sermons, you wise ones. For surely you will admit, even the most learned and mature among you. that colleges today are not all. not nearly all. that they might be. When a student is able, while in college, to have dates every other night, to engage in all sorts of ex- tracurricular activities, and to carry outside work besides, and still receive a degree at the end of his fourth year, it does seem, doesn ' t it, that degrees don ' t mean much anymore, and that colleges perhaps aren ' t as much to their students as they should be? The persons in whose hands the destinies of the colleges of this country rest should begin to realize, one of these days, that unless colleges leave the paths they are now following, they will, before long, be institutions without purpose and without meaning. Mr. Aley Whistling in the Dark People used to actually believe that after dying they would ascend to Heaven, and there, reclining upon the banks of a crystal stream, pluck harps and sing with the angels forever and ever. But now science has come along and shown how ridiculous such beliefs arc: and those who had expected a pleasant and rest- ful eternity find themselves facing the dark. Disillusionment always causes bitter despair; and everywhere now are to be heard scoffers, who jeeringly term religion whistling in the dark. To many persons, that is all it is: they arc afraid, and are trying to keep up their courage. So if religion and churches are to endure, they must reestablish themselves on something more real than the superstitions which have been jerked from under them, superstitions which even the most zealous religious leaders of today will admit have caused untold misery in the world. Mr. Kershner

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g:?%M. ©g What ' s It All About, ? Anyh OWJ MERICAN school children arc taught so many myths that by tlic time they reach college their minds are almost completely and hopelessly made up for them, and lines of thought are carefully settled in grooves from which it is hard to escape. Phi osophy should try to get these children to think for themselves, to dislodge the gullible attitude they have always held and to put in its place a critical attitude. But philosophy, of course, must do more than cause disillusionment. Disillusionment usually leaves its victim in despair: the world he considered sound has been proved false, has gone to pieces, and he sees nothing but futility everywhere. Philosophy will show him that life is meaningful. It will lead him not to the despair of nothingness, but to the beauty of reality, reality as it has been conceived by the world ' s greatest minds. This Great Age People have been led to believe, by after-dinner speakers, campaign orators, and newspaper writers, that, because of its tremendous mechanical development, this is the world ' s greatest age. But is machinery absolutely beneficial to society? What use is radio, for instance, if over it one hears nothing but jazz music, vaudeville patter, church sermons, advertisements, and political propaganda? And do not forget, by the way, that modern advantages are enjoyed at the expense of men ' s souls, men ' s bodies, men ' s lives. Miners who work in black. dust-filled underground pits to supply with coal the factories that manufacture the advantages usually die before reaching middle age; human lungs and human minds, you know, can endure only so much. Men who build automobiles, men who have to work in hot factories for eight or ten hours every day, hearing always the ceaseless roar of the modern industrial plant — what does life hold for them? No matter what the politicians and jour- nalists say, this age is in a frightful mess. Do the sociologists know a way out?