The Washington herald., 1922-09-15

Has co-education changed its So
ber habit?
Is it true that young men with a
head for business no longer work
their way through college as laun-
dry agents. but find a more profit
able enterprise in bootlegging?
Do young co-eds not only bob their
hair and roll their stockings and
smoke cigarettes and kiss promis-
cuously and turn up their insouciant
noses at the ideas and ideals OF
their mothers, but drink the stuff
that bootleggers sell?
Lucian Cary, author. editor, and
formerly instructor of English at
Wabash College, on a tour of in
vestigation among Western State
universities, says that the coed
college of today is vastly different
from the institution he graduated
from in 1906.
Formerly Drank Beer.
when / was in college fifteen or
twenty years ago" Mr.. Cary says,
drinking was perhaps the most
universal social diversion among
men students. Drinking was not
regarded as a serious vice so long
as IL was masculine. The town was
full of saloons. Students sat around
these saloons drinking beer from 5
@, clock in the evening until closing
tina or after Beer was believed
to be healthful. OF course 1t was
considered entirely inadquate after
a football game or in that great re-
lease which followed the writing of
the mid-year examinations. At such
times conventions demanded whisky
and the streets were full of drunken
students There was even a fra
ternity of drunkards. a society to
which only those who got drunk
congenially and frequently were in
vited.
The faculty never disciplined a
man for drinking unless his drink
ing led to his arrest by the police.
There was only one rule about
drinking: the fraternities all for
bade their members 10 bring liquor
into their chapter house and TINS
rule they rigidly enforced
Drinking Women Unknown
But, paradoxical as 1t may seem.
the tone of the college was sober
and industrious. The community
was chiefly composed of young men
who took getting an ed.cation Sc
riousIy. And, Of course. drinking
was practically unknown among the
women.
"I knew, in four years, of only one
coed who drank anything containing
alcohol, and she disappeared from the
rolls and from the sorority
of which she was a member, suddenly
and forever.
college men and college women led
surprisingly separate lives. There
were dances. But it was the day OF
the waltz and two-step-and the truth
was that most students regarded amy
dance as bore.
The life of the university outside
tho classroom was almost wholly In
the hands of men. All, athletic sports
were theirs to control. as matter OF
course. But they controlled nearly
everything else-the publications. the
elections. the social life
THE typical college girl Of the peri
cd was a serious minded person who
expected to teach in a high school.
There were exceptions, but frivolous
girls were unusual. The tone OF the
women was astoundingly serious.
They dressed simply and quietly and
with what would now be regarded an
excess of modesty. Rouge was almost
unknown. and the lip-stick was un-
heard Of"
Flapper Now in Power.
But the situation is different today,
Mr.. Cary finds. The flapper is in
power. and the modern coed Is a very
youthful-looking person, who wears
short skirts, shows her bare knees un-
blushingly. samples moonshine when
she can, and dances in a fashion that
would have been regarded as indecent
ter. years ago.
AZ for smoking among college
women, Mr.. Cary says:
How was I to choose between the
druggist across from the campus who
told me he didn't sell a dozen packages
OF cigarettes a week to co-eds. and
the student who told me that all the
girls he knew smoked cigarettes and
the coed who told me she didn't know
a single girl who smoked? 1 got some
statistics on moot points from an elab-
crate questionable that had been an
swered by some thirty-ive hundred
students. The testimony of the ques-
tionnai-e on smoking was that one
out OF every two men smoked and one
out of every ten women.
MY impression is that co-eds do
not drink. | don't doubt that a
great many of them try it out. But