Hiram College - Spider Web Yearbook (Hiram, OH)

Page 18 text:

The department that is too often neglected by die better class of students, and which again too often sadly shows this neglect, is the athletic department. Be it right or wrong, the fact still remains that a college is judged to a great extent among other colleges by the athletic team she sends out from among her students. Very often the best men of the college will stand off and criticize their team because they have not won a victory, have not played fairly, or in some way have disgraced themselves in the eyes of these holy men. But do you know that you are just as much to blame as any man on the team because you have not given your presence and influence to strengthen and purify their work? A man that is not willing to give his assistance to the athletics of ' his college has no light to criticize them. And, furthermore, he is losing a good and valuable part of his college life. A strong body, a quick perception and correspondingly quick decision, strong nerves and a controlled temper, are all results of enthusiastic athletics. A position on an athletic team is an honor to anyone obtaining it. There is no one in a college who deserves more honor than he who has success¬ fully captained a team through a season of hard-fought battles. Not only the captain, but every man on the team is deserving of special honor. He has sacrificed his time, his class-room work to a certain extent, and frequently most of his social enjoyments, for what he con¬ siders the best interest of his college. So let us have more charity for our teams. Let us honor them more highly, and cheer them on with our personal help and influ¬ ence. Success to our college athletics! Nowhere and among no class of people is the art or vice of criticism so highly developed as among students. In our Literary Societies the offices of first and second critic are filled by members of the societies who are elected to those positions. Those offices are not desirable because the critics are not self-ap pointed. But Society is not the only place where you meet the first and second ciitic; in fact, every hall you enter has not only two such officers, but it has many self-appointed ones. Ton first enter the college and 12

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mathematics is that they are too difficult, which, on the contrary, is the best reason for taking them. A student only gets out of a study what he puts into it; hence, the more thought a study requires, the more value is he going to receive from it. No student can find the half-dozen roots from an equation of the sixth degree, find the resultant of eight or ten forces acting at as many different angles, compute the last term of a decreasing geometrical series, or find the integral of the ever interesting unknown X, without learning to concentrate his mind on one thing, and at the same time to reason logically from one step to another with the utmost accuracy and nicety. It enables a student to present an argument in such a way that its truthfulness is clearly and firmly established. While everyone realizes the value of the sciences and the lan¬ guages, still neither of these can in any way fill the place of mathe¬ matics. There is no vocation in life where a student will not need and use the training received by them. The time is coming when it will be necessary not only in producing the best thoughts, but even in understanding them, to have one’s mind deepened and trained by the systematic and logical work done in this branch of our edu¬ cation. The thorough, thoughtful student will find nothing more pleas¬ ing and interesting than to follow out the intricacies and niceties of the problems in the higher mathematics. The term “inter-collegiate 1 ’ is a vital one when used as descrip¬ tive of our American colleges. No one college is strong enough within herself to give to her students the highest polish, without the help and touch of students outside her own walls. That our colleges realize this is shown by the many different departments to which the term “ inter-colicgiate ” is applied. Among them are the “Inter¬ collegiate Christian Association, ' 1 “Inter-collegiate Oratorical Asso¬ ciation,” “Inter-colegiate Student Volunteer Movement,” and “In¬ ter-collegiate Athletics,” and the list might be extended, but enough have been mentioned to show what a factor of college life these really are. 11

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they greet you there. The manner in which you open the door is noted and remarked upon; the way you walk upstairs, and the way you walk down again; the way you shake hands, and the way you leave the college halls. All of these are occasions for criticism, as well as each particular. Your walk is criticized; you take too short steps, you take too long ones, you walk too fast, or perhaps you walk too slow, more likely the latter, but anyhow you do not walk just according to the latest and most approved Delsarte method. Nor do you walk just as physical culture says you should, and in truth vou could not walk naturally if you tried. Your table-talk is criti¬ cized and your general talk is critized. Fault is found with your taste. Your peculiar likings for people are wondered at and discussed both privately and publicly. You are criticized from the point of your manhood and womanhood. You are criticized as a student. You are criticized as a Christian. In truth, it matters not what your position, you are sometime, somewhere and by someone criticized. The students’ criticism is cpiite wide in scope. He also criticizes what he hears and what he reads. The lecturer realizes that no audience will notice the grammatical error or mispronounced word so quickly as the student audience. Here the student is apt to lose as much and more than he gains. The moral truth of the lecture should be that which would leave with us the most abiding lesson. Although clear, simple and well-chosen language adds to the beauty of the thought, the student should guard his critical mind and not lose the force of a truth because it has not been exact in its gram¬ matical construction or elegant in its rhetoric. Only the critical student will become a scholar, but he should study to be a true critic and avoid that spirit which is repulsive to all. The hyper¬ critical person not only loses his popularity, but treads upon the finer sensibilities of all with whom he comes in contact. 13