Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-12-11
GOSSIP. OF GOTHAM.
Growing Importance of College Men
in Metropolitan Circles.
DAN LAMONT'S CASE OF INSOMNIA.
Murray Takes a Whirl in Real Society and
Tells His Experience.
FRONT SEATS AT THE THEATERS
rcoRrrspoNpENcE OF TIE n,s,,-cz,

CORRESPONDENCE OF THE DIsPATcR.l
/ NEW YORK, Dec. 10-The college man
is fast becoming an important social insti-
tuition in New York. Yet this is not what
could by any stretch of imagination be
called university town. In Paris, Berlin
and many other large cities of France and
Germany, and in quite number of cities
of England, Scotland, Russia and other
countries the student has prominent place
in the social fabric, and collectively makes
himself felt in politics and religion, as we'll
as seen and heard everywhere and in every
thing. The uprisings of the foreign student
at times have caused crowns to rattle about
the heads of their annointed owners. The
student has long been distinct feature of
English social life, and institutions of learn
ing have for centuries formed part of the
British constitution and figured in English
Jurisprudence.
The position and influence of the student
in our own social fabric have thus far been
Insignificant Indeed, outside of the Gov
ernment Institutions Of learning. West
Point and the Naval Academy, they have
been next to nothing-merely local and in
fnitesimal. The student of civil life as
such is unrecognized by our Constitution
and cuts no figure in our laws or traditions.
He has up to very recently been treated as
mere schoolboy, without definite status
as to society and with no status whatever
as to the body polite.
About the first material effort to amend
this unimportant position in affairs was
made in the late campaign, by the attempt
to mass the educational influence and the
student himself incidentally in one compact
organization for political ends. Without
reference to the cause or effect of that
movement, it must be regarded as one of
the significant indications of the change
that is now going on, a change that is thus
substantially recognized by political lead
ers of the day. Other indications are to be
found in the widespread interest in college
affairs. When 1000 of the cream of this
metropolis turn out on a disagreeable day
to witness game of football between rival
college clubs, when thousands travel miles
to attend college boat races, and when the
great daily newspapers surrender pages of
descriptive space to the undergraduate,
this interest is apparent. That it Is not
wholly a matter of growing fondness for
athletic sports is evident in many things,
the chief of which is in the Importance of
the student himself We have seen him
taking practical possession of this great
city whenever he sees fit to do so and we
have noted the indulgent eye with which
his idiotic excesses have been viewed.
This because of the popular sympathy.
The source of this sympathy is probably
the key to the changed and changing reia-
tions of the American student in American
affairs. 1t is in the fast increasing body of
alumni. No college man ever really COM
pletely sewers his relations with his alma
mater In his sons and grandsons he re-
news those relations perennially to the
grave. When, as in the course of the COM
ing century will probably be the case, the
college man in public affairs and in the
higher walks of business and social lite
shall have become the rule rather than the
exception, the student will be recognized as
the same important factor in the United
States as he is now in Germany and other
nations older than we are. And then our
institutions of learning will have probably
become an equally well recognized part of
the body polite :