The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-01-27
YALE SOPHOMORE SOCIETIES
4 GROWING RETOLT AGIINSI
 THEM.
Their Perniclous Influence on Yale
 Democracy Proposed Remedies.

CthilS III tllt iScidSliiiS dSpe'A NAAA~i
 at Yale against the three sophomore
 societies has during the last threS
 weeks rapidly culminated, and it is now
 stated authortatively that something
 will be done soon either in the nature
 of abolishing them, increasing their
 numbers SD as to eradicate present evils
 or at least, in some way calling the
 attention of the faculty to their perni-
 cious effects on Yale social life and on
 the principle and practice of Yale de-
 mocracy.
 There are three Greek -lettered sopho-
 more societies in the academic depart
 n1ent of the college, containing each
 about seventeen men. The oldest, lie
 Boule,' was organized as a secret de-
 batting club in 1875, immediately after
 the faculty had abolished the old sopho-
 more societies on account of disorders
 and too much conviviality. The second
 sophomore society, Eta Phi" was es-
 tabished in 1S79 and the third, Kappa
 Psi" somewhat later. At first they eX-
 isted quietly, despite faculty prolsbi- i ton, but gradually came to be recog- nized by the faculty in kind of semi tIllGlal ldHillDll UT, ot 1SoStJ tC cS Si'i cially tolerated.
 Their pestferous influence on Yale
 democracy began long ago. Their
 members, as early as some twenty
 years since, began to form kind of so-
 ciety "cult'' or clique. perpetuating it.
 self through junior-year societies and
 the higher honors of the senior socie-
 ties. An election to the latter, especial
 by to the two oldest, is esteemed the
 greatest prize of the Yale academic course, more sought and craved than it-
 erary scholastic, or athletic prominence, if unattended by the social honor Con- spicuous as were the three senior socie- ties in academic eyes a generation ago.
 when classes numbered from 110 to 120 men, they have vastly magnified now as objects of undergraduate ambition, when academic cloasses average about S25 men each. As prizes they penetrate the whole social life at Yale to degree which old graduates can hardly realize, and the area of disappointment after the elections has increased in direct ra- tio to the increase of classes, only in part tempered by the fact that the good man who is not elected finds so many OlUGI SDDu HIGH lD SlldGe HIS ItEl GUS.
 It is within this intense society sys- tenn that the sophomore societies have been so baneful. As institutions they have been regarded, and have been in fact. artificial thresholds to upper class society honors. Once lodged in soph- omore society the student has felt his chances of the highest society promo tion not quite assured, but very great ly increased, as the sophomore society men have hung together during their whole later course, to the unjust exclu- sion of outside merit and opportunity. The exclusive sophomore cult" has, | almost monopolized athletic ! and social elective honors, exercising a kind of feudal terrorism over the jun | for and sophomore classes. The extent | of its reach is shown by the fact that the two older senior societies of fifteen | men each have contained usually some | twenty-six or twenty-seven sophomore | society men, large majority of the ! third senior society men also coming rom the sophomore cult" The high est social honors of Yale, in other words, have been distributed overmuch ,n d crude sophomoric basis of promi- lence and college character-a basis established as often by flnesse and the purious popularity" of the old wood 'n spoon type as by academic achieve nent. Up to few years ago, indeed, he ''cult" with it's vicious social con inuities reached back to the prepara- ory schools, notably Andover but that vii has recently ceased While it ex- sted a clever and delft sub-freshman ould enter an Andover school society, md, once embarked on that tributary, loat easily down to the Yale stream nd into the higher social honors of the ollegc.
 The peculiar institution has been a lumber of times attacked bly by ,hauncey w. Wells, now an instructor I rhetoric in the college, who as chair nan of the board of the Yale Literary fagazine, wrote In 1895 leading edi- orial article assailing the system. A title laters Nathan Smyth, '97 in his unior oration, boldly attacked the evil nd won the junior exhibition prize he Yale Alumni Weekly, a vigorous of Yale democracy, has rom time to time assailed the sopho lore oligarchy, and not long ago char cterized the reform of it as perhaps the lost important change needed at Yale. .. the evil has been scored mer- lessly in many high quarters and even y senior society men who have been filling to kick away the ladder by | hich they have risen. College senti- | lent has now, at last, risen to the | oint of revolt illustrated recently by | le election of a man not connected | ith a sophomore society to the man. ge1ship of the track athletic associa- on, and by break in the sophomore : recession in the junior prom com |
 ttee. | The plan most likely to be realized is a le increasing the number of sophomore (, 'cieties from three to six and thus di- s ting them into harmlessness Advo- !; tes of this method urge plausibly that 7, ere will always be sophomore socie- c, as, and that the scheme is an effective d cans between present abuses and an n ,olition that WiM not abolish. Another <, an is to enlarge the sophomore socie- +, es and make the junior societies small t, , thus grading up'' to the higher sem <, r honors for the survivors who are test. A more indirect remedy pro sed has been the increase of the num- = r of senior societies to ska plan =,