Yale University - Banner / Pot Pourri Yearbook (New Haven, CT)

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . » . . . YALE BANNER AND POT POURRI j ' .vavavj ' ssssssss . OLD BRICK ROW supervision of the choice which will guara ntee the system against becoming an incentive to exclusiveness rather than a guardian of the old democracy. It is not difficult to visualize a Yale reconstituted along the lines sug- gested. To the undergraduate the plan seems perfectly feasible and is on the whole appealing. To the alumnus it necessarily looks like a big break with the past. But we who have been out of college for a quarter of a century must remember that Yale has already gone through an enormous change during that period, until we are hardly the best judges as to the social conditions of to-day. We are and should be the watchdogs of sound tradition, and as such we should be ready to support a plan that bids fair to retain the realities in which we believe, while changing the forms. Yale — the external, the formal Yale — has been changing continuously, along with the rest of our national institutions. But to an astonishing degree, Yale has retained throughout the changes, her characteristic qualities. Here on the horizon is one more change, its inception at least made possible by alumni generosity, sacrificing in part the old class spirit, rendered weak by circumstances, but making possible in its place a new House spirit with a vitality that shoidd rival the class spirit of the nineties. Within the separate groups should be possible the maintenance of the old loyalty which enabled every man to get the most out of his college contacts. At the same time within the larger Yale, so long as the colleges are housing units only, we shall retain the benefits of a university with the breadth and richness of a cosmopolitan life such as we know at present. Amidst the advantages of the new we shall have preserved the spirit of the old. 21

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CAMPUS VIEWS