Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-03-05
HOW DOES 1T
| STRIKE YOU?

DRESIDENT WILSON, who tried to make
L the world safe for democracy. had before
tried to make the university of which he was
president safe for democracy.
When he sought to abolish the clubs at
Princeton he ran into a solid vein OF con-
scrvatism.
The undergraduates and the graduates,
too. were as unregcnerate as are the nations
Of the world.
If one may believe the Harvard Graduates
Magazine, President Lowell is encountering
the same spirit in his efforts to reorganize the
social life at his university.
q q q
TNElE first step at Harvard has been for the
l. university to purchase the Gold Coast,
the famous group of luxurious dormitories,
privately owned, and housing the richer stu
dents.
President Lowell does not call his reform
making Harvard safe for democracy.
He is wiser than a serpent.
He keeps away from that fatal word.
He saws merely that he desires to ''intcn-
sify the influence of Harvard upon its un-
dcrgraduatcs.
But the students see dcmocratizing in what
is going on.
"Hurvard is as democratic as any college
in the United States" writes one indignant
UNDERGRADUATE in comment quoted by the
Graduates Magazine.
Another writes, "Any freshman who cant
make friends at Harvard has only himself
to blame"
A youthful. cynic says: II am snob
The rule here is snub or get snubbed. The
old bromide about when in Rome is good
dope. Lonesome? Not bit. | would be,
though. if ! insisted upon acting like II
human being. With little application any
fool can get the snOb habit"
q q
JNVIDENTLY one educational ideal is to
~ get the snob habit.
Not of many Of the undergraduates prob
ably of about 10 per cent, one young Har-
| ward commentator says.
There are Il dozen other ideals.
And the real trouble at Harvard and at
other places of learning is not so much that
| 10 per cent. perhaps, think that to get the
| snob habit is to be educated, but that there
| is no prevailing notion as to what it is to
| be educated.
University life falls apart into little groups
| and cliques just because each set having a
| common ideal of education, whether it is to
| be IA snob, to make the football team, to be-
come mildly inoculated with the virus of life,
| TO acquire u higher order of craftsmanship
or what not tends to club together.
| The university is not sure enough as TO
what is an education to impose its ideal on
| the mass.
| And American life is so vast and various,
| SO Uniformed that there is no single end
toward which young men aim when they go
| to college
q q q
| \NIHEN college is big these groups tend
| w to become big and the divisions in uni
vcrsty life deep.
Mr.. Lowell would cure them by cutting
across their lines and setting up artificial
| divisions of his own.
On the English system he would divide the
| university into residential units small, self
| administered and self contained. like the col
leges that make up Cambridge and Oxford
Thus not all the 10 per cent Of the whole
student body whose ideal of education is Ia
get to be a snob, to sell themselves in a su
nerior fashion could get together, but only
the 10 per cent in any given residential unit
Thus they might find themselv"s a littl,
lonesome and let in some of the other feI
lows, whose ideals Of education might be lesl
enlightened; the least pertinaciOus of tn,
"grinds, for example,
q q q
PUT OF course there is such unity as exists
- in English university life not becaus,
of the self administrative colleges. but be
cause the English universities have cieal
] end. tt