UNDERGRADUATE AFFAIRS

(The following article which Professor Bartlett presented as a paper at the recent meeting of the Alumni Council in Philadelphia, is of such general interest that the editors requested its use for the larger circle of Dartmouth interest represented by the readers of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE.—EDITOR.)

It is my conviction that the best use an undergraduate can make of a college is to give his full strength to a struggle for excellence in the work of its curriculum, and then give some more of that full strength to activities, selected upon his own initiative, which test and try him out among his fellows. After laying down this platform I wish to put aside the pedagogic attitude if I can, and speak mainly of things-as-they-are.

I come out of a college with a fixed curriculum offering in four years only one election,—between some French and the calculus, with no separate or specialized administration, with about a dozen professors all graduates of the College and members of the College Church,—a college of pinched and grinding frugality almost without esthetic adornment. It had a glee club of four members and a pianist when there was one in college, a baseball nine—exactly nine—lucky to get two games in a season, an occasional chess club, round table, or singing-school, a thin monthly magazine, five fraternities eagerly supplementing the curriculum, the whole set in an eighteenth century village. It was a good college.

I live in a college with a curriculum so expanded that it would require about thirty years to take all the courses; with legitimate administrative expenses greater Than the total pay-roll of my day. It has, and needs, a $140,000 auditorium standing idle most of the time. It maintains a private theater,, business offices for its faculty and for a host of undergraduate functionaries. Its athletics cost about $40,000 a year and usually earn more. Eighteen fraternities and societies own houses, and two or three more are waiting. And the internal complexity of activity and interest is as great as in the modern world, with which there are countless bonds of close connection. It also is a good college.

If one is ever in the mood to long for the simpler, harder, more rigid ways he is as much wasting his emotions as when he sighs for the earlier world of sentiment and mystery before the inquisitiveness. and exactness of science, for the Bible of literal accuracy from cover to cover, a creation just 4004 years before the Christian Era or the days when there were no multimillionaires.

The basic thought is that the student comes to the college a boy and leaves it a man as he always has; that he has the same hopes, aspirations, discouragements, failures and successes, struggles within himself, as in simpler days; that in all the complexity one boy can live only one life, and if the mind is fixed on the individual rather than on the environment it will be seen that his path is only a line often very true to a definite purpose; though it is much more difficult now to find a straight course through this labyrinth than along the walled highway in which the old boy used to travel. But with the four years of his course he adjusts, he chooses, he doubts, he summons all his courage and pushes .forward.

Let me state a proportion,—As was the simple freshman of fifty years ago to the simple college of his time, so is the complex freshman of today to the complex modern college? I say no; others may say yes. For one thing he has not evolved at the speed of the college and the world in the last fifty years. For another, the schools in their hurry and their diffusion have not found time or place to make him. worry about doing something thoroughly and com-letely. You may say it was nonsense to learn the whole Latin grammar by heart; certainly, but what takes its place in thoroughness? It was protozoic to spend so much time on spelling, reading, and arithmetic; O yes, but do you know anything in the modern education of a child that does for his mind what was done by that little daily torture in Colburn's Mental Arithmetic?

I believe the foundation of the ideal college lies in the right treatment of the right freshmen. I have time for composites, not exceptions. The units of every freshman class, as I see them, come believing that while there is undoubtedly a Sophomore, a Junior, a Senior class, there has never been a real freshman class in the place before. They do not credit their instructors with perspicacity, or with experience of just such freshmen as they are. With the admirable optimism of youth—and what should we do without it?—they believe that there is a good sporting chance that their particular shortcomings will escape notice, and so they gamble against a dead sure thing for the house. They—many of them have reason to believe that however it may be with others, the College cannot afford to lose such treasures for any college as they are going to be; and it is whispered around that of course the faculty will bluff, but that secret and potent cherubim and seraphim are protecting them-from all harm. When these notions coincide with radical pedagogic reforms, or the sudden realization of a department that too many are clogging, its courses, then comes the great awakening. But when 33 out of 47 are taken from a class football squad, and 62 per cent of an entire class fail at some point, publicly, within the first five weeks of the college year, one can only say, "This is magnificent, but it is not education." Possibly it is preliminary to education.

Freshmen naturally run into fraternities. What is the matter with the fraternities? Not very much, but something. The fraternities are driven by economic necessity. Freshmen have new money which must come into the business. The only reason that I do not say that all the houses are mortgaged is that I do not know. But like public service corporations they cannot stop. Sixteen houses to keep up! One or two more to build or buy! Eighteen sets of freshmen to capture, averaging about twelve per set! Thus half the class, many men who will come to the front wherever they have a chance, by Senior year, are left out; and these mistakes are too seldom rectified. They struggle too with some broken' agreements and an all-pervading suspicion of more broken agreements. The agreements are bad, restrictive, without advantage to those observing them most carefully, easily evaded,' nullified or broken by a wink from parties technically outside like recent alumni. And if they were as pure as ebony soap is said to be, the 1-2 of 1 per cent of impurity would corrode the whole mass with sinister imputations and reprisals. The agreement would better be laid aside until scraps of paper are more sacred than now. I see only one logical issue,—to leave each fraternity free to secure its new men in its own time, under such regulations as the College can enforce,—of course making pledges public and permanent. Nor has this settled down to a satisfactory method. This year it brought men back in large numbers two weeks before the opening of the semester and developed a. conflicting inter-relation of spheres of influence aptly characterized by one of the participants as a "mess.."

I have often asked here and there, "What kind of men do you want?" without getting an answer of definition. "Good fellows," of course; but what kind of good fellows? It is certain that there is not much searching the records of the preparatory schools for high scholarship. It is certain' that next to men of bad character men of merely athletic reputation are the worst investment for a fraternity, which is no reflection upon the many fine men who are athletes too. The men who make the impression are ready-mannered in new situations and with some gift or talent. I do not say money talks; I do not say it does not; it is disposed to talk where-ever it is. These selected men average lower in scholarship at the start than the other half of the class; but if the same group or class is followed through, the fraternity men make the greater average gain; some say it is because the poorest are dropped. The greatest trouble with the college fraternity' of today is that it has found no mission in things worth while. But we must not overlook their pleasant, refining, hospitable, community life.

My time permits only the briefest comments upon the peculiar experiences of the freshmen in hazing, fagging, public stunts, and peculiar dress or customs. This year hazing, by which I mean those petty annoyances from which no freshman could earn immunity, which were most severe upon the peculiar, original or sensitive, and which every year drove a man or two from college, has been reduced to a minimum. Personally I object to fagging because it is involuntary service, and because it is too often a means of escape for the fag-or from work that he ought to do himself. I do not think that any one can object to instructions to the. freshman to take off his cap to his instructors and not to smoke a pipe around the streets: and the funny prescribed stunts done about the campus in the public eye nicely relieve the pressure without damage anywhere. Again I much regret that the custom of colleges now separates one of the four classes from the other three by a public mark, instead of dissolving the new comers into the common life with no more inferiority than they naturally have.

I cannot discuss athletics if I am to speak of anything else; so I will content myself with two or three comments. At last that sprightly game of soccer football has germinated among us from long dormant seeds, and within a few days nearly fifty men have gathered to play it. Its auspices are favorable, for it appears that we have with us a real soccer player, the former captain of an English college team; and Dr. Bolser has assured the players of the Faculty's favor, since the game develops headwork.

I was for athletics about thirty-five years ago when they were struggling to get their nose inside the tent, so to speak, and I have been for them ever since; therefore I may say that I think it would be a distinct benefit to all the parties interested if extra-mural games of college freshmen were discontinued, with no diminution of out-of-doors competition within the college precincts. Also, I would like, or think I would, like, to see a complete stasis of inter-collegiate tions for just five years, with total abolition of all precedents, customs and vested rights. At the end of that period I would like to see them reestablished upon the wise foundations made possible by our present knowledge. What a foolish wish!

At present the leading diversion of the College: is dramatics, which is understood to be something quite different from amateur theatricals. Possibly it is a little overweight, but one phase of it is full of hope and merits the highest praise,—the intense ambition for excellence, for perfection on the mechanical side. It marks a new era of promptness, smoothness, •accuracy, completeness of detail. Perfection of details is riot characteristic of student enterprises, it entails too much pains; it seems too "cut and dried"; it lessens opportunities for the moment's inspiration. And the local public have not been exacting. They have paid their money and waited patiently half an hour after the time for the play to begin; they join in the merry laugh when some one's whiskers come off, and make no riot over the interminable intermissions. —At a student play during the summer session the total of the intermissions was seventy-five minutes—But not so are dramatics managed now. Perfection and the obvious aim at perfection are so admirable and so contagious that we may expect a .higher standard in undergraduate music, journalism, perhaps even in college work. Perhaps men will learn to throw and to catch a ball as an elementary prerequisite for the football team with the same certainty that would qualify a candidate for the baseball team. Perhaps mediocrity in general,—mere passableness—will be classed just where it should be. Not quite so much approval as the management merits can be given to the acting in these numerous plays. Wise criticism would help much more than injudicious praise. A recent burlesque performance—the kind students can do best—was so well done and so full of genuine fun as to be wholly delightful. But in serious performances the actors have so much to learn in pronunciation, articulation, modulation of voice, in facial and bodily expression and in ease of manner on the stage that in a less kindly audience it would make the judicious grieve. But the last word upon this subject should be praise of that which is excellent.

There is in Hanover an open sore, a century old, with biennial aggravations, which might be considerably cleaned out and sterilized by discreet non-partisan applications. Its core is in the registration of voters, and it is magnified into an issue called "student voting." I think New Hampshire has no provision for or against students. Like others they must satisfy the Supervisors of the Check List of their legal qualifications; and unless there is appeal to the courts in a definite case the decision of the supervisors is final. The question comes upon "residence," always difficult; and the duty of the supervisors is the more difficult because for a long time it has been held by some of influence that of course a student ought to vote somewhere; and if the poor fellow couldn't go home to Keokuk or Kalamazoo to deposit his ballot the proper alternative was voting in Hanover; and also because the enterprising tendency of youth to "try it on," "put it over," "get by," supported at times from higher up, has created in the minds of the supervisors a suspicion of disingenuousness which much interferes with clear-headed and even-handed justice. When neither party to a contention has confidence in the other the situation calls for a faith cure. I think the student world generally believes that they are encouraged to go on, or are restrained from going on, the check list, for partisan reasons. They would give little weight to an exposition of the law unless it could come from a source free, in their minds, from political bias.

There is one form of bad manners to which a minority of college men are prone from which we are not not yet free,—the public and indiscriminate use of super-virile language upon insignificant occasions. I can at least understand why, upon certain exciting occasions a man may explode into the strongest language that he knows. It used to be said of one of my contemporaries in college that his outbursts were not profanity but prayer. And having had a medical education I see no reason to shrink from monosyllabic Anglo-Saxon when it best expresses the meaning. But as I, in common with almost every one else in Hanover, have intercepted calm, peaceful, friendly, though not soft-voiced, sidewalk chats that would fertilize a garden and set the dry grass afire, I have wondered much what conditions produced men with so lurid and fetid a vocabulary delivered with such serene unconsciousness that it is out of harmony with the surroundings. This is a small and not peculiarly local evil.

On the principle that it is not sound journalism to give much space to that which is merely great and good, I can only mention that admirable organization, the Outing Club, with its trails and cabins and Sky Line Farm, and its carnival of winter sports for which it is making better provision in Pine Park north of those golf links which are now the property of the College. It capitalizes the splendid northern winter for joy and vigor and love of nature and largeness of life.

For the same reason I can only refer to the steady progress of the Committee on Student Activities in organizing and unifying the many forms of student forth-putting, taking them out of the field of private gain and upholding them in larger and broader ambitions. Already about $10,000 come into the hands of its treasurer.

I should much like to dwell upon the great organization of the Christian Association, hundred. It is undertaking every sort of helpful service to the College arid the community, and is reaching far outside. But I may not give details. It stands for practical modern Christianity, rich in good work, promoting strong lives, and permeated with spiritual ideals. If one thinks of the College as a place of mental unrest, of upheaval of old beliefs, as an open forum in which nothing is reserved from questioning, he must take into account that by reason of these very conditions, not necessarily hurtful, the forces of good are aroused and armed.

Robinson Hall, a hive of undergraduate industry, is in the short experience of six weeks smoothly working out its destiny. Doubtless various problems will arise and adjustments be made as time goes by.

You ask, "Is the College, the same old democratic institution?" Well I hear rumors from around the State that it is altogether too Democratic; but that is an unworthy pun with a "big-big D." But in this broad, dollar-loving land of ours do you know any place where the same old democracy and equality prevail? Men still work without apparent loss of caste, but I fancy they are not the ones who most enjoy the Junior Prom. The qualities of a man yet are more talked of than his money. I have heard rich students bitterly complain that the poor and not the rich draw the line. Obviously I cannot go far into this subject upon which every one who knows the College will have his own views. There are signs of the times. At the last football game there were many more automobiles than could be accommodated on the field. Just a few years ago I felt rather ashamed as I went to and fro on a cold winter day all bundled up while the poor fellows traveled around, bare-headed, without overcoats, and in low shoes. Now during the middle fall as I have gone out eight o'clock, usually not feeling the need of an overcoat, about a third of the fellows are wrapped in noble overgarments which another autumn will be out of style. I am still wondering what will be the effect of a dainty little theater which seats only 300, in one of the college buildings. There is nothing in all this; and that is why I mention it.

I think the general life of the College is sound arid good. I have asked those within and those without. I have observed for myself. I know that those who travel from college to college with a keen eye for the inner life say the same. Not that we are better than other men; but our environment is better than- other environments. There are the glorious natural surroundings; there is the remoteness of the ordinary means of damnation. I know of no safer place for.a boy who has a glimmering idea of the proper use of freedom. And to my notion God could not make the highest type of man without giving him opportunity to choose between good and bad. Some times it seems to me that there is no place in the world of living men which combines so great freedom of choice with so little lure or pressure to choose the base. And that is not denying that there is some experimenting with life, some practical demonstration of the defiling properties of pitch and other things.

The spirit of indifference is a great apparent evil, but you will find it largely a pose if you have any occasion to talk real things with the individual. He is not indifferent to the college; he questions its value. Life and its problems are on his mind, happily light burdens as yet. He thinks about morals, about religion, about God; though he finds himself sometimes stranded on agnostic shoals. He wants to know things.

As I see the life of the day and contrast it with other times that I have known I see one precious gain. You and I have known at times of the atmosphere so blighting to the development of individual qualities—sneers, ridicule, caricature, suppression of the man who differed. We live in a freer air. The vast curriculum, the diversity of instructors and instruction, the rebellion against restriction, the reversion to the "other side," the attrition and competition of so many interests often opposing one another develop individuality. Surfaces are smoothed and polished ; excrescences are trimmed ; but the man is encouraged, stimulated and developed,—a most desirable unfolding of college life.

And we seem to live in a general atmosphere of good will; though possibly I mistake mere indifference for good will.