Shorts

Little St. Stephens College on the Hudson River in New York State donned shorts. Said the Dean, with official dignity, "I am very sorry to find that some of my more childish men see fit to imitate, ten days late, Dartmouth College the only rural-minded college in New England." Somehow our being rural minded does not bother us a great deal. If the democracy of Dartmouth, if the naturalness of her undergraduates, if the Dartmouth Outing Club, if the absence of smoothness all mean rural mindedness, let us feel sorry for our sarcastic and mechanized contemporaries.

Meanwhile shorts have become a byword in intercollegiate circles. Not that the idea has spread greatly, because most colleges are not located in a Hanover where such a costume is reasonable, and the abbreviated pants will take time to acquire any great acceptance. Talkies of the shorts at Dartmouth appeared throughout the country; results: four students appeared at Boston ball in full dress sans pants and were ousted after attracting crowds; the president of the freshman class at Tufts College appeared there on campus, paraded for a short time, was mobbed by upperclassmen and stripped; numerous minute attempts were made at other institutions. But after all, we do not particularly care whether the outside world smiles or frowns; we are concerned with our own comfort and we are getting it. The day before we left college this spring fully half the undergraduate body were in shorts.