United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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able of appreciating any attempt at cultural advancement which might be undertaken by the magazine through the medium of ar¬ ticles by outside contributors and faculty members. But the largest class is that composed of average students, to whom the word stu¬ dent is hardly applicable, whose reading tastes lie in the realm covered by “Academic Antics.” And it is this group which, by faith¬ fully contributing its forty cents per year, pays for the magazine. This is the primary consideration for any faculty editor. Regardless of the grandiose dreams of his academic superiors for a second Queens Quarterly in this metropolis of the west, regardless of the offended tastes and carping criticisms of the intellectually alert, it is patently his duty to bear tidings “which shall be to all people.” He must sell his soul for forty cents, forty pieces of copper. The criticisms of the editors of Vox in the past five years have been numerous and bitter, and, interesting fact, from all three fac¬ tions. To date an attempt to steer a middle course has failed. Dis¬ content is bound to continue if the editor is given his just due—con¬ trol of the policy of his magazine. But it is not too much to ask of the critics that they take into consideration this situation of triple pressure and save him at least from Selkirk or Brandon. CONTRIBUTORS Rev. A. Russell Cragg Neil A. Dewar, ’36 M. D. Gilchrist, ’37 W. A. McKay, Theo. R. Purvis Smith, ’39 A. Flowergarden, ’34 R. J. Leighton, Theo. Margaret McCulloch, ’37 Bill Thorne, ’39 [ 4 ]

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Sditorial O UR recently deceased conte mporary, Volume 23 of The Mani¬ toban, in an editorial headed “A University Magazine,” regrets the fact that the literary talent of the University is being wasted on “little magazines, resplendent in colorful covers, containing an assortment of blank verse stanzas dedicated to spring, summer, autumn, winter, and mistress’ eyebrows, plus a thesis on the per¬ ambulations of the protoza together with a book review and an article on the love life of some eighteenth century bard,” in other words, the faculty magazine. In that there are only six such pub¬ lications on the campus of the University, three of which are the production of technical faculties, and hence ruled out, and one in French, and hence incomprehensible to the critic, the object of the attack is rather obvious. One must excuse the editor of The Mani¬ toban, however, on the grounds that he is governed by a seemingly innocuous phrase in italics under the name of the paper in the mast¬ head—“Fo r a Unified University.” The implications of the phrase have been somewhat ignored during the past year by The Manitoban, and it was probably felt that its inclusion must be justified in some manner—whence the zeal for a University Magazine. In all fairness we must confess that next year we too will change our tune. Mean¬ while, however, we are Editor of Vox. It cannot but be admitted that there is a great deal of justifica¬ tion for some of the criticism—“that the contributions are drawn from a class known variously as the ‘morons,’ ‘the cream of the intel¬ ligentsia,’ etc.,” that an endeavor is made to maintain a cultural atmosphere by the exclusion of jokes, that a good deal of the material content is made up of “sentimental claptrap and evanescent verbi¬ age.” Although Vox cannot admit the latter charge as frankly as it might wish, one can certainly agree with the first two, while plead¬ ing for a fair consideration of the circumstances surrounding the composition of a faculty magazine, and the system of student gov¬ ernment under which it operates. The editor of a faculty publication is subjected to pressure from three sides, pressure which medical men would stigmatize as a direct cause of dementia praecox. There are, in a faculty, a small group of reasonably intelligent students, contemptuously referred to as the “cream of the intelligentsia,” from whom contributions of a fairly high calibre are expected and received. It would be a joy were it possible to direct the editorial policy of a magazine with these in view as readers and critics. There are also one or two cap- 13 ]

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THE COLLEGE OF TODAY IN THE WORLD OF TOMORROW A. R. CRAGG T HE British Broadcasting Corporation started a series of talks last summer called, “I Protest,” in which speakers were allowed to protest against anything that would seem worth while protesting. We can be very certain there was no shortage of topics, and no lack of zeal and enthusiasm in exercising the freshly granted privilege. If there is one thing that mankind in general is inclined to do with some readiness, it is to protest. And for not a few, the last twenty years or even more have been a period in which presidents and deans, professors and lecturers, alumni and not wholly disinterested laymen have joined in a chorus of protest against education, until the reports and addresses and articles have made a library of lamenta¬ tion. When Woodrow Wilson was still President of Princeton, he spoke of the note of apology everywhere for education, of the lack of definiteness of aim in teaching, and the hopeless confusion and utter dispersion of energy among students. Nicholas Murray Butler, then President of Columbia, lamented the tendency of academic institutions to drift with the tide rather than to formulate definite policies and to labor for their execution; and the tendency to be made the prey of every passing whim rather than to pick up the slack in discipline, to accept the responsibility for passing upon relative values, and to dispel the confusion between general train¬ ing and vocational preparation; the choice of which, he claimed, would be a choice between suicide and salvation. Less dignified protesters have condemned our “curriculum as chaotic, our college professor as a cloistered recluse out of touch with the broad human currents of contemporary life, and our stu¬ dents as vagrants of the higher life, and college days themselves, as at best, a pleasing interlude after strenuous high school days and before the more serious activities of life.” It is a sign of hope that the protesters, whether dignified or undignified, were often those who knew the college best. Higher Education has actually become popular, attracting thousands of young people from every walk of life. Here we find students whose parents belong to the oldest traditions and others whose parents are New Canadians; here, those who come to spend four years of leisurely loafing, and many more who have to prac¬ tise rigidly planned economy; here, those who have some notion of 15 ]