THE REACTION FROM, COEDUCATION. 15 



find themselves occasionally received on these terms, therefore, if they 

 aspire to scholastic specialization in graduate schools. It will be remem- 

 bered that the undergraduate courses constitute for many of those who 

 plan to teach in the secondary schools the sole opportunity for speciali- 

 zation. For them the undergraduate curriculum affords essentially a 

 professional training, and subserves exactly the same function as does 

 the graduate school for those who are preparing for collegiate posi- 

 tions. 



It behooves us to hurry on to a rehearsal of some of the more 

 seditious social tendencies for which coeducation is held responsible. 

 Foremost among these charges in point of fatuity for some of them 

 are not fatuous at all is the asserted blight upon college spirit caused 

 by coeducation. Now college spirit is a capricious plant which blooms 

 profusely in the light of athletic victories and often leads a sickly life 

 of hibernation at other periods. As commonly set forth, it consists in 

 the belief that one's own college is the best on earth, which in some 

 particulars is to an intelligent person always patently untrue, and at 

 times of overwhelming athletic defeat, a thing extremely difficult for 

 even a partisan to formulate with vivacity. Conceived more seriously, 

 it consists in respect and affection for one's alma mater, and in ear- 

 nest devotion to her welfare. It is unquestionably assisted by the accu- 

 mulation of institutional legend and tradition. These things come 

 slowly and with age. It is helped into a condition of self-consciousness 

 by all vital student organizations which do not forget their dependence 

 upon the college. Secret societies in many colleges are certainly injuri- 

 ous to college spirit, not because they work consciously against it, but 

 because they absorb wholly into themselves sentimental interests which 

 should include the institution, and because too often they stir up 

 vicious animosities among themselves in a manner which necessarily 

 detracts from the solidarity of interests in the student body at large. 

 The elective system, with its disintegration of classes, has, wherever it 

 has gained an extensive foothold, apparently modified almost to the 

 point of extinction the old-time forms of college spirit. These consid- 

 erations affect coeducational colleges neither more nor less than other 

 colleges. On the more serious side of respect and affection for one's 

 college, it is certainly difficult to see why coeducation should be disas- 

 trous to college spirit in the case of students to whom the system had 

 always seemed the natural thing, unless it can be shown, as it certainly 

 can not, that all coeducational institutions are intrinsically inferior to 

 institutions for the separate sexes. Sufficient insistence upon the 

 shame and ignominy of sitting in classes with the weaker vessels may 

 undoubtedly undermine respect for his college in the mind of a lad 

 brought up in a preparatory school for boys. Other lads could un- 



