New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1905-06-19
''Tbe Young Man and College Life. :"
Professor G. Wilder. of Cornell Exception
Statements by Senator Beveridse.
To the Editor of The Tribune.

To the Editor of The Tribune.
Sir: 1.-THE Saturday Evenings Post" of Phila-
delphia. for June 10. contains article by Sen
ator Albert ]. Beveridge, of Indiana, entitled
THE Young Man and College Life"
Despite an exuberance that may be official
and geographic rather than individual, the ar
ticle as whole is so sound. and especially
emphatic IN Its denunciation of the cankering
cynicism of certain seaboard college circles
that 1t is almost ungracious to condemn one
paragraph presenting pernicious mixture of
fact with fallacy. of counsel to nearly super
human self-restraint with encouragement to
quite subhuman Indulgence. The paragraph is
headed (perhaps by the editor):
THE MORE FUN THE BETTER"
Is fellow to have no fun? you will say OF
course, have all the fun you want; the more the
better But if you need stimulants and tobacco
to key you up to the capacity for fun, you
solemn person indeed. What / mean is that you
shall do nothing that will destroy your effective
ness. Play sports and fun do not do that. They
increase your effectiveness. Go in for athletics
all you please, but do not forget that that is
why you are going to college Nobody cares
how mad are the pranks you play. Take the bit
and snaffe off of the humors of your blood
whenever you please; that is all right. I never
took much stock in the outcry against hazng.
We cannot change our or the habits of 1t. a
young man is a male animal after all, and those
who object to his riotlng like young bull
In perpetual quarrel with nature.
Taken by itself. the foregoing paragraph
might well leave the reader in doubt to
whether it is an instance Of the devil preaching
morality" and then dropping suddenly into his
more familiar doctrines, or an exempifcation
Of the ease with which kindly mentor not too
we'll trained in logic and ethics may be mised
by the conscious or unconscious acceptance of
half truths and false analogies embodied in orig
inal or selected maxims
The more fun and the more mad pranks the
better. Literally that means work at all,
which, of course. is not intended. But need fun
be folly? And need pranks be such as to make
other persons mad? Surely even for college
youths, there must be ways and means of mental
and physical enjoyment not at the expense of
others.
Senator Beveridge doubtless believes that
boys viii be boys" But, firstly even boys need
not be hoodlums. or disturbers of the peace, or
sneak thieves: and, secondly, the kind OF youth
in question always insists very strenuously that
he is man. until, that is, he is caught in some
misdeed, when he promptly reverts to a state of
infantile Innocence and ignorance.
We cannot change sex" A truism, per-
haps. Yet there many, in college as we'll
without. whose unsexlng would render this a
cleaner and safer world. There was unin-
tended satire in the chiId's distinction, Animals
are imperfect beasts; is perfect beast"
Perhaps not in day in decade. Not
century ago, however. masculine quality"
consumed bottle or more at sitting and then
rolled under the table without losing caste.
Just our sex is distinguished largely by
smoking in public, and even in the presence of
women. Elsewhere in this article Senator Bev-
eridge denounces the of tobacco by youths
as absurd" and evidently expects his words to
aid in abating the nuisance.
"Rfoting like young bull" is to be condoned
If not encouraged. The periodic conflicts of
wild bulls. ETC., in order that the fttest
may not only triumph and survive, but repro
duce in the herd the qualities that have given
them the victory. For comparison with coll
lege life and purposes we must picture very diff
ferent conditions. Per contra the analogy would
be refreshingly fulfilled by the spectacle of col
legiate tatranthropes 'rioting'' within separate
Enclosures at the end of ropes attached to
their noses-or ears.
THE directors In a perpetual quarrel with
nature" So is every unless he is too good
for this world or so vile that hell yawns for
him Nature our legacy from the source
common to the bull and the hog. the tiger. the
sheep and the ape, impels us to lust and theft,
to Violence folly and uncriticaI imitation. That
we may establish our own self-respect and de-
serve well Of the community we must all wage a
'perpetuals quarrel with nature"
4 never took mach stock in the cutlery against
hazing." In other words, hazing. under
stood and practised in American colleges, is not
wholly condemned by the Senator from Indiana.
Passing over the grotesquery Of such a pro-
nouncement by a member of the higher legis-
lative body of a government that, after pro-
longed inquiry December 1900 and January.
190D found explicit rules against hazing and
dismissed for the offence members of the two
national academies military and naval, let US
consider what college haZing is and is not
In the first place it is based upon a gross
rnisconception. OF the numerous falacies which
prevail in institutions where taught law,
ethics, morals and sometimes religion, none is
more fragrant more deleterious than the
sumption that. ex officio, any student body
of students has any authority over any other
individual or group. The victims of college