Swarthmore College - Halcyon Yearbook (Swarthmore, PA)

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M .ll£Y0i ®f 191i Some Stu6ent Oralis DEARLY every one who tries to portray contemporary college life falls into the error of tliinking it maj ' he done by a few bold strokes of the brush. Thus r lind Mr. Walter Lippnian asserting that the American college student has the gravity and mental habits of a Supreme Court Judge. Conceived as a subtly worded case of contempt of court, this sentence rises to the sublime heights of blasphemy. As an attempt at careful exposition it sinks to the ridiculous. Still I have known some few students who were grave, — con- genitally so, it seemed to me. Others developed this trait occasionally, — during ex- aminations, for example, or when brought up before the Dean on a matter of discipline. Former President William H. Taft has attempted a composite photograph of the American student whom he chides severely for his lack of physical discipline and of erect bearing, his indifferent manners and slouchy dress. Indeed, a few years as Kent professor of law at Yale seem to have made our erstwhile conservative chief of state a decidedly- radical reformer of college abuses. Could anything more abundantlj ' estab- lish the need of prolonged, detailed and merciless muckraking in this held? And yet college men as a rule are not slouches, nor is slouchiness by any means the chief of college vices. So far as manners are concerned students have always im- pressed me as being quite as much above the average of young men of the period as we have a right to expect. A few of them, it is true, are somewhat flashy in their ap- parel although not so much so as the ubiquitous advertisements of the makers of col- lege clothes would have us believe. But this is a minor matter, as is also the occa- sional slipshod character of the student dress in the semi-privacj ' of the campus. The one serious charge in Professor Taft ' s indictment, that of a lack of physical discipline, can scarcely be sustained. Contrast the trim, erect, athletic undergraduate with the greasy-ej ' ed, stoop-shouldered, bow-windowed business men, successful and tired, who ever since graduation have been leading sedentary lives, eating, drinking and smoking too much, and indulging little or not at all in vigorous sports. Indeed. I have always found alumni reunions rather painful affairs because of the rapid phj ' sical deterioration apparent in the classes which have been out five, ten, fifteen or more 3 ' ears. They remind one of ladders descending sharply, rung by rung, from perfect youthful health down through neglect to open graves. And Mr. Lincoln Steffens also generalizes too readily about undergraduate life. He writes, — yea, he even italicizes the statement that CoUcfic stiidriitx Jian- too Diiirh rcrrrriiir. He knows this of his own knowledge. It was true of himself, he avers. Nor, assuming the truth of this autobiographical statement, does he seem to suspect that he must have been a most unusual student, a veritable white blackbird of the campus. Reverence! ' e Gods! Reverence for whom, for what? For Prexy ? For their particular Profs ? For the old Grads? For Lit, for Math? For anything else in the whole divine order of the universe? Living as they do in a keenly critical atmosphere it would be surprising indeed to find much of this qualit} ' , — whether 5 ' ou consider it a virtue or a vice, — among undergraduates. And yet some reverent souls there may be still among our students, a few even in the faculties. Let it be confessed, however, that most of the influential college professors of the period can with difficulty be brought to recognize any authority except that of the more recent text-books they themselves have written. Doctor Taft came, and saw, and now views with alarm this tendency on the part of certain professors, presumably at Y ' ale. Surely, then, it must be more than common elsewhere.