Hampden Sydney College - Kaleidoscope Yearbook (Hampden Sydney, VA)

Page 31 text:

Sophcmores. He would witness the front ranks meet, a struggle and confusion worse confounded in which the six agile Freshmen would rush desperately over the heads of their opponents in a mad effort to gain the pole. Presently a whistle is blown and the Freshmen draw off leaving the Sophomore flag fluttering as defiantly as ever. If he was now interested and had a humor for the struggles of youthful brawn and brain he would remain to see the Freshmen reassemble their ranks and come forward as bravely as before. Perhaps the same confusion and ill-success would follow. Then their undaunted columns would advance the third time, and maybe the rush of the six would prove successful, the pole be reached, scaled, and the flag would belong to the Freshmen. Such are the famous flag rushes held annually at many colleges. There is a certain small college town on the New York Central which entertains travelers every year. If you should chance to be journeying through this town on a certain day in September you would have your attention called to perhaps a hundred eager looking young men standing impatient to board your train as it pulled into the small station. At that moment your interest breaks into astonishment for a company of twice as many rushing and panting young men appear from around the depot, make for the cars and proceed to forcibly tear our former company of would-be travelers from the steps of the train. As your locomotive steamed away you might make out a hand to hand encounter in which the first comers were finally worsted, forced to have their hands tied behind their backs and thus be marched triumphantly back to the college. The explanation of this surprising scene is that you have seen one of the customs of at famous small college which had the distinction of defeating the Yale eleven this year on their own gridiron. The sophomores, en masse, were making a secret dash for a nearby town where they had planned their annual banquet. Experience had shown the folly of holding these banquets in the college town for the Freshmen inevitably played havoc with them, frequently breaking them up entirely. fcustom had decreed that in so doing the Freshman was acting within his rights, and thereby not showing any disrespect toward the upper class menl. Unluckily a Freshman was in the town to which the Sophomores were going, learned the intelligence of their coming, and wired his class-mates, with the result we have just recounted. The Sophomores have still another method of carrying through their banquet, which consists of a concerted plan whereby they come upon and catch all of the Freshmen separately, tie them hand and foot in their own rooms, and only liberate them when their banquet is over. The Freshmen likewise give a banquet and the Sophomores reciprocate these methods of interference. There are still other customs which make for class rivalry. l-lazing is a custom that does not seem to be as much in vogue now as formerly. lts abuses were most glaring at military schools, and on this account it is rapidly becoming unpopular. But it serves as another illustration of what has been before shown, namely, the hand of tradition. Hazing is as varied in its forms as the colleges which practice it. Whether it be carrying water, doing errands, fanning out, making extempore speeches, singing solos, climbing poles, fighting fellow class-mates, or passively receiving cuffs and blows the humiliation of the under class men is the object and tradition deserves the thanks. There are other places where barbarisms of this type have disappeared to be replaced by customs equally as vicious in their malintent. Thus there are colleges which prescribe such unnatural traditional laws as to permanently distort the social attitude of their 23

Page 30 text:

the gridiron and the diamond. They are memorial of a distinctive college spirit, where love for Alma Mater has been ever passionately burning, and cords of friendship and unity have bound men in body and in soul. A songless college is as unthinkable as a songless bird. There is nothing more inspiring than to hear a great body of college men sing a college song that is very dear to them all. The very air seems to catch the spirit of the hour. A pervading fellow-feeling is everywhere paramount, and every man is kin in this one touch of nature. To the man out in the world who has long since gone out from college associations there exists no more potent means of recall. There never breathed a man with soul so dead that he did not have a thousand precious memories awakened at hearing such a refrain. When time shall steal our joys away And all our treasures too, The memory of the past will stay And half our joys renew. Perhaps one should mention college yells in this connection, if only for the sake of completeness, and the opportunity to disclaim any kindreclness of appeal. The yell is for the youth, and the boisterous, and the unthinking. It can never approach the high plane of sentimental appeal that the song does. It has neither poetry nor music nor imagination about it. It is the voice of a temporarily insane multitude. It is too often prompted by revenge or barbarous self-satisfaction over triumph, and has too little of the magnanimous about it. It is too often a cloak for, rather than an expression of true and sober feeling. It is a curious fact that military schools sing poorly, while their yelling is superb. None of them could sing Nassau, or Fair Harvard, or L'The Good Old Song. Uniforms and drills and exact hours have made for stereotyped men. They lack the loafing hours, the fire-place chat and the whole round of academic sentiment which makes men sing. Doubtless it is the fault of the institutions that the technical has crowded out the imaginative and the beautiful. If one were to take the trouble to investigate I am sure he would find many curious instances of the effect of tradition on different institutions. The treatment of first year men by upper class men is purely a traditional matter. Thus at one college you will find Freshmen wearing silly little caps of gay colors which hardly cover their parietals. They do not do this from preference, mind you, nor have they been commanded to do so by anybody. But tradition has decreed it, and none is so bold as to antagonize this guiding principle of college communities. A descent upon another college in the early days of October would show the stranger a pole erected well into the middle of a large field, fluttering on the top of which he could make out the flag of the Sophomore Class. By good observation and maybe a few bold questions he would discover that the men with locked arms, who stood ten deep around this pole, and wore very confident expressions on their faces were Sophomores and that they were on the point of defending their flag. If his curiosity was aroused by this time and he stayed further he would see a phalanx of Freshmen, carrying some six of their most agile members on their shoulders, determinedly approach this pole and the 22

Page 32 text:

graduates. Such unfortunate customs are those which evidence themselves in disregard and indifference for first year men. Forcing first year men to address upper class men as mister, to always wear a hat, never to talk loud, to avoid the places the upper class men frequent are quite as much, if not more, humiliating than hazing. Tradition expresses itself in the way college men give evidence to the call of the egregious in them. Does the dormitory spirit prevail, or does the fashion call men into fraternity houses, or is there no sentiment about these matters, men being promiscuously scattered in boarding houses and in different dormitories? Those are important questions, for there is no greater factor in shaping the character of a college than this simple matter of where students live. No one can gainsay the right of the college man to select his own associates, and therefore the fraternity house fashion has the most sanity in it. Here the family life is nearest approximated. Though it is an artefact, still it is a home and such are its influences. A modification of this same principle is seen in those institutions which have substituted clubs and club houses for fraternities and fraternity houses. Here oddly enough a man passes from one club and one club house to another as he progresses in his classes, but the spirit is the same and we are quibbling with names when we try to draw a distinction. The dormitory spirit is different in that it promotes a wider and more promiscuous association. There is one college in particular where this spirit is very strong, and chiefiy so because the college authorities have fostered it in every way. The secret of the system at this institution does not hinge on the handsomeness of its dormitories, though in this respect they are hardly surpassed by those of any other institution, but in a simple structural device. In the centre of each dormitory there is a great foyer or lobby, with galleries on either side containing small tables at which students are always at liberty to entertain themselves at cards or in reading. The real charm of the foyer, however, is the huge fire-place in which great logs of wood are burned on cold winter nights. Around this community hearthstone the inmates of the dormitory gather in soft, comfortable chairs, and in the glow and crackle and cheer of the blaze that faces all, their fancies somehow seem to run free. Then follows a pleasant round of yarn telling and political debate 'till the clock tolls the hour for retiring, and each one hurries from that circle of rest and recrea- tion to his bed-room and his books. Obviously, there could be devised no more democratic influence in college life, not to speak of the educational and humanizing effect of such a custom. The hand of tradition has been very wise in those institutions which hold once in 11 while, at stated times, a college hour. At such times all recitations are suspended, and the whole student body assembles in the college auditorium. Songs are sung, a dis- tinguished speaker addresses the student body, and various students speak on sundrv college affairs. What an hour is this! It is obligatory upon no one to come, yet every one comes. This is an hour of learning, enthusiasm, introspection and planning. It is a courtesy to the social side of college life on the part of the academic. The whole didactic machinery stops to pay its respects to that other side of college life, which is outside of the class-room but just as essential. One has but to witness and feel the enthusiasm of such a gathering to become a perpetual advocate of such a valuable custom. 24