UNIVERSITY STANDARDS 77 



houses, and whiles away the forenoon in stunts which teach him his 

 place some more and further his initiation into that innermost, sacred- 

 est circle, the knights of the college tradition. Since nothing can be 

 done unless you get student sentiment behind it, the faculty sits in 

 helpless inactivity; or, if the emotions are much stirred, rushes to its 

 laboratories and attempts to think out some serum which will work 

 upon the student mind and permit it to look with favor upon the 

 studies of the college curriculum ! 



At last, it may be, the freshman is started in his studies. But 

 attending classes and studying lessons is not as he had pictured it. 

 The men whose names and imposing academic biographies had awed 

 him from the pages of the college catalogue he must now learn to look 

 at from the angle of his sophisticated companions. This one, frankly, 

 is a chump; this other can be counted on to do the fair thing and not 

 flunk a fellow; that one will be down on you anyhow. One is to be 

 worked in one way; another, in another way. In this class you can 

 safely cut as much as you like; in this other it is necessary to look 

 after answering roll call. The main object is to keep from flunking 

 out; for as yet absolute immunity has not been achieved, and real 

 college life is too pleasurable to be hazarded too far. Getting some- 

 thing from the course is at least secondary. Getting the credit at 

 present seems necessary, and, when hard pressed, one's wits need to 

 be well sharpened. Why should one be too scrupulous, since it is only 

 the book account that matters ? Bluffing runs naturally into something 

 more effective, and the freshman sees the game of cheating going on 

 almost as a matter of course. Sometimes the instructor seems to him 

 to be aware of the game, but too embarrassed to call for the cards ; can 

 not afford, in fact, to become unpopular, for may not the instructor's 

 comfort, not to say his standing in the college, depend on the good will 

 of the student? Once in a while the committee — blankety symbol of 

 all that is hateful in an otherwise lovely environment — the committee 

 connects with some luckless offender, who, bruised and bewildered, 

 presently finds himself at the edge of the campus. All of which would 

 be tragic, were it not so grotesque, for but a single head has been hit 

 out of a multitude just below the line of breastworks. More and more 

 absorbing are the activities of the college of student life ; more and more 

 the faculty's college and its obtrusive exercises become an incubus, more 

 and more its occasional interferences become irritating and objects of 

 student wrath. Dissipation masks as good fellowship. The grosser 

 temptations lose horns and hoof. The freshman himself may be nor 

 athlete, nor actor, nor editor, nor society devotee. But he learns to be 

 vicariously active in all these pursuits; in an atmosphere of hazing, 

 shamming, bleachering, beating the game, his whole moral and intel- 

 lectual structure suffers irreparable shock. 



