Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1904-06-30
AMERICAN COLLEGE GIRL.
She Has Much More Freedom than
Her European Sister.

An interesting comparison between
the American college girl and her
European counterpart.
The American wOman's college is n
thing wholly amazing in European
eyes, according to this critic. No
European educational institution would
think of allowing to its inmates such
Il righteousness of surroundings as ap-
pears in the American girls college
room. The extreme simplicity of the
food being the only thing common to
both types of educational community.
To the uninitiated beholder the
American college girls room. with
flags and posters and sporting SOU
venirs and class symbols, with mems
pictures on desks and dressing table,
might be a college boys.
On the other side of the ocean young
women are supposed not to keep young
mems portraits in their rooms, just as
they are not supposed to meet on equal
terms of comradeship the subjects of
the aforesaid pictures. The absence of
books in the room and the conspicuous
presence of candy boxes and fruit
baskets might also strike the European
observer as peculiar.
All this corresponds with a radical
difference in the life of women stu
dents in America and in Europe. The
European girl goes to her university
purely for learning, and in the lower
educational institutions it is the same.
Study is the business of life. and only
those fortunate ones who have friends
and relatives to take them out
occasionally and give them a good time
ever get any fun.
In America the college is n school of
life. with all sorts of activities besides
study. The European college girl has
to find out after she leaves college
everything that her American sister
learns while mt college, though
occasionally in old Europe a girl has a
chance of getting out of her life per-
ilars more experience and at least the
same amount of pleasure as the Ameri-
can girl does. although in q way en-
tircly different: this is girl who at
tends Il university for men and enjoys
= 'hc Old World. among hundreds of
men. the perfect freedom of movement
and the feeling of independence which
characterize the happy life Of the
she realizes by herself an ideal of free
and Intelligent life. without the newt
able strain which comes to the same
life when lived by one girl among
crowd of mem.
The chief characteristic Of the
American wnman's college is well de-
fined. the critic proceeds. by the his
torical words. life, liberty and the
pursuit Of happiness
To the college girls happiness many
elements are cooperating. among
which, notably. are papa's checks and
the advantages depending thereon:
faculty votes forbidding a schedule of
over so many hours a week or more
than a certain number of courses for
the semester: constant anxiety on the
port of PREY and an. D." lest tho
young buds Of hope break down under
the strain of study, and SO forth.
This last appears particularly
strange to the European mind. No
one gives thought there. it appears
to the effects of study on the health Of
the students. we may moan. sigh or
revolt" says the writer ''we may
strike, protest or die in the attempt:
from the serene Olympus Of the faculty
the gods watch with calm, unruffied
brow the struggle of the nonentities
down in the halls of learning. Out