University of California Berkeley - Blue and Gold Yearbook (Berkeley, CA)

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Just how Harvard has acqu ired any such reputation is hard to see. There are, to be sure, a few men in Harvard (as in every community of any size that may be mentioned) who prefer to be exclusive, and who in their very exclusiveness find a certain sense of conceited satisfaction. But these men never amount to anything outside of their own insignificant little circles and so far from being a dominant influence at Harvard they are the most nearly perfect type of nonentity existent in the University. APPLETON CHAPEL, HARVARD In the College there are forty or more social clubs, only an insignificant number being secret societies or fraternities. Most of the clubs have club houses and boarding accommodations, but few have dormitory accommodations. Non-membership in a social club is by no means a conspicuous fact and is not in itself a matter of grave concern. What may be called Harvard ' s all-inclusive club is the Harvard Union, its membership being open to all members of the University upon the payment of a small fee. The Union, unique among col- lege institutions in America, has become the social center of University life and is the accepted place for mass-meetings and large student gatherings. 8 1

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Above all else, perhaps, there stands out as a feature of the life at Har- vard its wonderfully cosmopolitan character. In its registration this year, for example, every state in the Union is represented by one or more students, as are also the District of Columbia, the Canal Zone, Hawaii and Porto Rico. Twenty-nine foreign countries are represented with a total of one hundred and thirty-four students. Although Massachusetts and New York naturally send to Harvard more students than do any other two states in the Union, many of the Yestern and Southern states send a large number of men. California alone, for example, sent seventy of hers sons to Cambridge this year. In an address given at Yale University recently, LeBaron Russell Briggs. Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard, and probably the most widely known and best loved member of the Faculty, said of Harvard ' s cosmo- politan character: The wonderfully cosmopolitan mixture now found at Har- vard does good service in widening Harvard sympathy and revealing varied points of view. And this is certainly true. The young man who comes to Harvard with a desire to know and be known has wonderful opportunities in the way of meeting men and becoming interested in a variety of interests, intellectual, social and athletic. This complexity of life results in a maze of interests and activities apt to bewilder the student who is not sure of what he wants to do. Xo matter in what the individual student may be interested, he may feel perfectly sure that there are many others interested in the same thing. He has only to search to find. To the undergraduate who is at all active in College, it is extremely amus- ing, although at times somewhat disturbing, to hear some of the adverse criti- cism passed upon Harvard by would-be reformers and malicious defamers. One of the criticisms sometimes heard is that Harvard students are snobbish and that the College is but a hot-bed of young and conceited Boston aristocrats. THE YARD. HARVARD

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XORTH GATE, HARVARD Harvard is nothing if not democratic. As Dean Briggs put it in the ad- dress to which I have already referred : Let us remember that democracy is not the suppression of the rich or even of the wellbred, but the working of rich and poor, highborn and lowborn, side by side so far as their capacities and training permit ; it is that form of society which enables and encourages a man to seek his own level. This is exactly the opportunity that the student finds at Harvard the opportunity to seek his own level. There is no artificial rule the observance of which will make a man influential and well-known, but there is a constant tendency throughout the College to insist on activity of some form or another, and through activity intellectual, social, athletic, or all three a man is measured, and in accordance with his merit he finds a place in the life of the University. Perhaps Harvard ' s proximity to Boston has had something to do with the fact that Harvard is sometimes called a rich man ' s college. Xow the ques- tion of wealth may or may not have anything to do with democracy in a col- lege : that is entirely a matter of opinion. Nevertheless, it is interesting to know that at Harvard fully twenty-five per cent, of all the students registered in the University are doing some form of remunerative work to help themselves, and in the College proper the percentage is even larger. The University dis- tributes annually more than S145.000 in prizes, scholarships, fellowships, and other beneficiary aid. In addition to this there has recently been announced