# Discipline and the Derelict (collection)/The Fusser

The two sorts of activities in college life which invariably make the front page are the activities of athletics and the activities of social life. Athletics, of course, occupies the center of the stage, but the "fusser" is a close second to the athlete when those engaged in college activities are bidding for first mention in the newspapers. In the case of these two activities, as in many another, prominence brings a flood of adverse criticism, and the two things in the life of the undergraduate student of to-day in the big universities which are most severely railed at and criticized by the newspapers and by the public in general are inter-collegiate athletics and the students' social life.
Everybody, including those who live in college towns and those who are in the state at large, seem to agree that the social life of the undergraduate in college is excessive, that he goes too much; in fact it is quite generally believed by a great many that his life consists of very little else than social pleasure, and that he spends his time not in study, as he should do, but in running from one social orgie to another. The young women, especially at a co-educational institution where there are usually several times as many men as women, are thought to be intemperate in social matters to the extent of breaking down the health of a large percentage of them ​and of permanently acquiring a sort of social delirium tremens. Local women, at mothers' meetings and at afternoon sewing circles or bridge whist parties, look very serious and shake their heads knowingly when they talk of the awful social goings on over at the college.
"Believe me," some maiden of uncertain years affirms, "I wouldn't let a daughter of mine do as those girls do. It's scandalous, and would ruin any constitution."
Now the real fact is that the average young woman whom I know in college, and my acquaintance is not limited, has very little social life, and the average man, and I know thousands of them, has still less. Rather than there being too much social life, as many allege, I am convinced that there is too little. The trouble lies in the fact that what there is, is too restricted in character and is entered into by too few people. A study of the dances given at the institution with which I am connected will show two things: granted that the number given is large yet it is true that never more than ten per cent. of the whole student body is dancing at any week-end and often not one half this number, and it is true also that twenty-five per cent. of the student body does at least ninety per cent. of the dancing. The social work is unevenly distributed.
I have spoken of dancing as if it were the main social activity in which college students indulge. In an inland college town in the Middle West this is not far from the fact, though there are athletic games which bind more strongly than any other activity the undergraduate body into a more unified group; ​there are the church sociables which reach a considerable number of students, and there are also vaudeville and moving picture shows which at one time or another lure most of the students within their doors. Where the college is not situated upon a river or a lake there can be no skating, no tobogganing, no boating, and no bathing, excepting of a strictly domestic character. The undergraduate, who at the week-end, when his college work is done, is looking for somewhere to go with a young woman for pleasure or relaxation is practically always limited to dancing or to the local moving picture or vaudeville shows, and of these two opportunities the former presents the more refinement and the less evil and is most frequently taken advantage of.
Both of these forms of social pleasure seem to the unthoughtful onlooker indulged in to excess by the undergraduate body in general because he does not analyze the constituents of the crowd that make up the patrons of these social activities. He hears the rag-time music pounded out as he passes a dance-hall in the evening, he sees the crowds pouring out of a vaudeville play-house, and he concludes that students in general put in most of their time either at a vaudeville show or at a dance. He does not stop to caleulate that perhaps not five per cent. of the student body is dancing and not ten per cent. at the theater, nor does he conclude, as he should, as he walks through the student district and sees the student lodging houses lighted from cellar to garret that on almost any Friday or Saturday evening of the week at least seventy-five per cent. of the undergraduates are in their rooms after eight o'clock not engaged in ​any active social life at all excepting such as one may enjoy through associations with the fellows in his own lodging house.
If the observer who believes that the social life at any college or university is excessive would study for a time the composition of the crowd that frequents the vaudeville theaters and moving picture shows, if he would for a time regularly attend the college dances, as I have done for the past twenty years, he would see that it is largely the same people who support the shows and who are familiar with the regular change of bill from week to week and from day to day. I have talked often with the men who furnish the music for these shows, and they all admit that there is a deadly similarity in the crowds that come daily to these shows. The undergraduate gets the show habit as he may acquire the habit of smoking or drinking, and one habit is as dominating as the others. I imagine that very few college officers have attended more student dances during the last twenty years than I have, and the thing that constantly surprises me when I do attend is the limited number of students which frequents these parties. It is possible before I go to a dance to guess correctly the names of ninety per cent. of the fellows who will be there. Of course, if it is a fraternity dance the problem is easy, for the attendants at such a party will be the active members of the organization, but even when I am invited to the Junior Prom or the Sophomore Cotillion or the Military Ball or a Union Dance I have come to know the dancing crowd, and I can safely predict who will be in the grand march before I get into the reception line.
​Only a few weeks ago I was discussing this same situation with one of our college officers who was deploring the fact that our girls were going out to parties to an extent that was proving ruinous to the health of many of them, and she thought the University should pass some pretty rigid regulations to control this situation.
"How many of our girls," I asked, "do you think make up the list of these social debauchees? How many ought to be locked up or sent home or put into a sanitarium?" She thought for a moment and then replied, "Forty, perhaps," and then thinking again, "twenty would very likely include all of them." And this is less than two per cent. of our girls. I am of the opinion that not more than that proportionate number of our young men are excessively given to dancing and similar forms of social activity. I am sure that seventy-five per cent. of the undergraduates whom I have known have too little social life; instead of the social activities of our college being intemperate, the fact is that they are controlled by a monopoly of a very limited number of people. Five per cent. of our students, to state the case generously, have too much social life, twenty per cent. have about what normal young people require, and the remainder of the undergraduate body have too little, and so get out of college crude and inadequately trained in social matters.
This condition of ill-training is intensified considerably in an institution like the state university, because of the large number of technical students in attendance, many of whom are more interested in acquiring information than in getting a real educa​tion, and who look upon time as wasted unless it is put in in the acquiring of cold facts which may later be put to use in the earning of money. Graduates of city technical high schools and junior colleges who continue their technical training in college too often know and care very little about anything which does not seem to them practical, and social finesse they think is for girls and liberal arts students. They fail to see that as much money even, if that is all they want, is earned through finesse and courtesy and an ingratiating approach as through a knowledge of facts, or if that is putting it a little strongly, at least it may be said that no matter how thoroughly one may be trained in information or facts these are seldom of much use to a man in any business unless he can get the ear of some one and hold it without physical force or intimidation.
I believe that colleges in general give too little attention to the social training of their students. The authorities have the feeling usually that there is too much social life, that young men and women will look after these things themselves, and that the best thing the college authorities can do is to sit on the lid and discourage excess as much as possible. Thea authorities, also, are not unlikely to feel that study and social pleasures are antagonistic, forgetting the adage that all work and no play makes for intellectual slowness, and that every normal human being needs some social exercise. The feeling that every student will see to it himself that he gets all he needs might be correct if social opportunities were open in college to all students alike, and if all students had equal ​interest in these things and equal cleverness in adapting themselves to new social conditions.
It is the regular fusser, however, well dressed and "high man" with the ladies, who in every college community with which I am familiar, gives more time to society than to his studies, and monopolizes, to the exclusion of his sturdier companions, the social life of the college. Every organization has one or two such men, and they are so adroit in getting rapidly from one place to another that they seem much more numerous than they really are. Sometimes they devote themselves to one young woman exclusively, though this concentrated devotion is seldom for long, and almost never results in anything serious or remotely related to matrimony; sometimes like the busy bee they flit from flower to flower never stopping long enough in any one parlor to form more than a speaking acquaintance with the inmates. Some fussers try hard to get their names into every social pot that is boiling.
I have a young freshman in mind—Harold I think his fond mother named him. He goes tearing down the street while I am at breakfast to meet Ethel and to carry her books to an eight o'clock, at eleven I see him riding with Grace in her dual power car, and at three, as I look out of my window upon the back campus, I catch a glimpse of him strolling languorously with Blanche. I have no doubt that before dinner he has paid court to other susceptible hearts and that by bed-time he has sat in the easy chair at one sorority house at least. He is a hard worker, this callow young freshman, but it is not at ​his books, and unless he takes the Dean's warning he is not long for this intellectual world.
The fusser who devotes himself to one girl is quite interesting. I do not mean here to include the young man who is mature enough to know his own mind, who is far enough along in college to think seriously of the future, and whose prospects are sufficiently definite to make it possible for him intelligently to contemplate marriage. This class of men is not a very large one but, however many or few there are, I leave them out of the question. The man I have in mind is the one who is playing with emotion, who thinks or imagines that he is in love, and who grows as restless if he must be separated from the object of his melodramatic adoration for a few hours as does an inveterate smoker deprived for a half day of his cigarettes. Such a man can never be a student. If he gets out his books for an hour in a half-hearted effort to absorb a little information he is likely to accomplish nothing. His mind wanders to the last walk he took with her or to the next engagement he has made, and his eyes are fixed dreamily upon her framed picture on his desk. He may stick to the books for a few minutes, but it is not long until he remembers, perhaps, that she is leaving Lincoln Hall at this hour, and he rushes out to meet her and to—walk home with her.
Such a man while in this state of mind has an even chance of flunking, and no chance at all of doing respectable work. He would be more useful running a soda fountain than in college and very little use anywhere. I have occasionally tried to reason with him, but I can recall very few cases where I ​accomplished much worth while. The social enthusiast who thinks he is in love is not amenable to reason; such a disease as his must usually run its course, must wear itself out; there is very little that either medicine or advice can accomplish, and yet if anything could be done for him it would be by a physician or by a psychologist.
The game in which the fusser is sitting is not a cheap one; if a fellow is to stay with it long he will need to have a good income. There are parties and cabs and flowers to be considered; there are automobile rides and all sorts of excitements to be paid for, and refections and confections innumerable to be provided. He must constantly be on the alert for fear some other more adroit or more generous suitor should get ahead of him. It will not seem surprising, then, that the fusser is an easy borrower, constantly behind in his bills, and regularly overhead in debt. Not even poker played by a man of bad judgment, inept at the game, is more disastrous to an undergraduate's monthly allowance than is the game which the fusser is trying to play. I was talking not long ago to a father who has two sons in college to each of whom he gives the same monthly allowance, and this allowance is not an ungenerous one. His elder son was always in debt, always complaining of the stringency of the money market; the younger boy was satisfied, solvent, and could always show a respectable balance in the bank. The father was disturbed and unable to explain the trouble. I assured him that the explanation was a very simple one; his elder son was playing the social game; he had joined the sentimental army of fussers. When ​the father showed an inclination to doubt the accuracy of my diagnosis of his son's case I drew out a good sized florist's bill against the boy, long overdue, which had come to me in the morning mail from a local establishment with the polite annotation that any effort which I should be willing to make in bringing about a speedy settlement of the claim would be gratefully received. The father was convinced.
It is the fusser who monopolizes the organized social life of every college. He is seen at every party, glued to a single partner throughout the evening. He may come late, but he never wants to go early, ten o'clock may find him yawning, but midnight sees him freshening up remarkably, and if the party is a formal one and is allowed to run until one or two o'clock, he is just getting his second wind at these hours and is eager to continue his toddling until sun-up. It is he who opposes any attempts to regulate the hour of bringing parties to an end on the ground that such regulations interfere with the personal rights of individuals. The longer the party runs, he thinks, the more fun it is, for he never allows his real college work to interfere with his studies. He would drop dead from fright if he contemplated continuous study for six hours, but eight or nine hours of continuous dancing gives him great exhilaration. The fusser in college reminds me most vividly of the country greenhorns in pioneer days who felt that it was a waste of time to call on a young woman on Sunday evening unless they could sit around yawning until three o'clock in the morning.
It is he, too, who frequently breaks into the man​agement of social functions, since by being on the managing committee of a party he thereby secures free admission and so cuts down his expenses. If this graft includes free cabs and free candy for the girl, so much the better; he is just that much ahead.
The fusser, stretching his legs before the grate fire in his lodging house, lying in the barber's chair getting a face massage, or sitting on the front porch watching the crowd go by, has but one topic of conversation. He is not interested in the supremacy of a democratic government in Russia, or in athletics, or in food conservation; he is not interested in labor agitations, or in his studies; or in anything that makes for the betterment of the community or the state; his only topic of thought and conversation is girls, singly and in groups, individually and collectively. What he doesn't know about girls has not been written or thought of or talked about. He knows them all absolutely, and he has them all tabulated and cataloged and properly estimated. He usually does not agree with you at all in your own personal estimate of any individual young woman in question and is sure that if you had had his experience you would know a deal sight more than you do. He knows a lemon from a peach in any garden of girls in which he may be wandering, and he is eagerly willing to give you the benefit of his skilled judgment. You may be bored by his talk after you have listened to him for a half hour, but you could not in reason doubt his taste or his conclusions.
I have seen a healthy, enthusiastic freshman come home from a pleasant happy evening with a sensible normal girl have all the joy and enthusiasm taken ​out of him by the knowing fusser to whom he confided the details of his call. The poor freshman is pitied, laughed at for his taste, and told that he has been wasting his time upon a "dead one." It is the fusser who sets the styles in girls as well as in dancing and in social forms and conventions.
The fusser is a social aristocrat. It annoys him to meet at any social function one whom he does not know or who is not in his own particular social set. If he is a fraternity man, and he very frequently is, it galls him to have to associate with "barbs"; if he is a liberal arts student he feels annoyed at having to come in contact with the cruder "ags." If he goes to a dance, he clings to his partner throughout the evening; he avoids bourgeoisie crowds of common undergraduates, he considers any general college function cheap and vulgar; he likes best to get into a small exclusive organization for social activities where one does not meet so many uninteresting people whom one does not know or care for. Anything that makes for social democracy he discourages or frowns upon, and if by mistake he stumbles into a democratic social gathering, he is unspeakably bored or gets a lot of sport out of the experience by taking his place at a distance, not entering with any heartiness into the pleasures under way, and by making fun of whatever is done or of whoever comes along. He looks upon the whole performance as a crude, vulgar jam which affects him only to give him ennui or pain.
I was talking to the president of one of the most prominent of our undergraduate organizations at a Union dance last spring about these very matters. ​He had spoken to no one apparently during the whole evening excepting the young woman over whom he had been hovering until he condescended to give me a word and a hand-shake. "These parties are a horrible bore," he ventured, "one never meets any one whom he cares to know or to associate with," and the young woman with him simperingly assented to the doctrine. His object in speaking to me, I found, was to ask my advice and to obtain my consent to his organization of a little group of men, a kind of a social monopoly, which would make it unnecessary for him to come into contact with any excepting the most select—he to make the selection. I tried to show him the advantage of a wide acquaintance, the opportunities for training and improvement in the democratic associations which were open to him in just such social functions as he was then a part of; but he could not see it; it did not appeal to him; he was altogether selfish and narrow in his social activities; he hated the crowd. He was a good illustration of the typical fusser, who desires to restrict and dominate the social life of college for his own advantage and his own narrow, petty, selfish pleasures.
There are a great many young women in our co-educational institutions who encourage this type of man. He keeps the furniture in sorority houses dusted and polished through his various calls; he contributes chocolate bon bons to satisfy the feminine craving for saccharine; he has a fluent flattering tongue, and he is ready to play the gallant at a moment's notice. He so well satisfies the social needs of the moment that it seems useless to many so​cially nervous girls to encourage the friendship of a solider and a less showy man, for fear they will have less social excitement and fewer opportunities to make social engagements. The popular girl and: the fusser in college are both of a piece and together do much to spread a false idea of what the actual social life is of the average young person in college; both should be eliminated wherever it is possible.
The fusser in college is a social menace. His purpose in enrolling as an undergraduate is not to accomplish really good honest college work; the college is for him simply the theater in which he is to have a chance to stage a little social drama in which he will be the star actor. He wants to professionalize and commercialize the social life of college. All he sees in it is an opportunity to make money or to have a regular and continuous good time.
"I don't expect my son to do much work in college," a foolish father said to me a few years ago. "I want him to have a little social life, to enjoy himself, to acquire polish. He'll get plenty of chance to work after he leaves college."
"And he'll probably leave college very quickly," I added, for the man whose object in being in college is to get into society, very soon lags behind intellectually and either withdraws of his own volition, or is sent away. The man who gets no social training in college is missing one of the most important byproducts of college life, but the man who gets little or nothing else has wasted his undergraduate years.
The college that does not concern itself with the social life of its students, that does not in some way control or direct that life so that no one will be shut ​out from opportunities for social training and social pleasures is making a grave mistake. The college that without making an effort to change matters allows its social life to be restricted and controlled by a small group of social butterflies is committing a crime. I am sure that in the large institutions of which we regularly read in the newspapers, the alleged social dissipations, accounts of which are constantly making the front page, are indulged in by a very small per cent. of the whole body of undergraduates. It is the social aristocrat of whom, thank heaven, there are not many, who dominates and controls the social life of every college with which I am familiar, to the exclusion of the great body of students who most need the training which comes from such an experience. There are in every college scores or hundreds of young men and women who are too shy and too inexperienced to form a social world of their own, whose social instincts are being repressed, who are being shut out from the life which should be freely open to them, and who are starving for a normal social life. College authorities should be wide enough awake to see the situation and to meet it, the social autocracies in college should be overthrown, and every undergraduate should be offered a fair chance for social training and social education.