Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-09-20
CONSERVATISM LATEST FAD
ON UNIVERSITY CAMPUSES
American Students Turn Away From
Extremes of Gaudy Postwar Period
to IdOlize Tolerance and Manners.

leaders say that the movies and the
comic magazines are partly responsible
for it. The campus types depicted In
t movies and caricatured In the
comics disgust average college students
and set them to wondering. It may be
said facetiously that through these me-
diums they saw themselves as others
were seeing them and didn't like what
they saw. This obvious change, how
ever, is probably only the newest phase
of the ever-turning cycle Of campus
styles and moods. The pendulum is
only swinging back from the hectic.
n~iSy postwar style and probably,
after the fashion of pendulums, is
moving to the other extreme.
Change Noted Two Years Ago.
For the last two or three years close
observers have seen signs Of the APP
proach of this change. At the con-
vention of the Eastern Association of
Deans and Advisers of Men two years
ago, one dean, participating in the
perennial discussion Of college drinking
problems, said: TN my college the
noisy, intoxicated student seems to be
disappearing from the college dances. !"
Several other deans nodded their heads
in agreement II don't think 1t is a
sign of higher morality" he continued.
"~r of increased enthusiasm for the
Volstead act It seems more like q
change in manners"
In last years convention Of this as
ISOLATION there was a quite generally
accepted understanding that in dozens
of ways college undergraduates, at
least in Eastern colleges, were under
going q marked change Of attitude
toward campus practices which had
long been traditional. The only doubt
seemed to be as to why the change was
coming about, but the deans were too
grateful for the nature OF the change
to be intent on looking the gift horse
in the mouth.
Certainly the acceptance Of this ex-
PLANTATION will satisfactorily account for
many of the campus happenings which
otherwic seem without explanation. It
will explain to head cheer leaders, for
instance, why these days they are
having difficulty in getting student
crowds to explode their lungs in or
ganized yelling. Three or four years
ago varsity cheer leaders began to
voice their complaints. They were still
going through the conventionalized
acrobatics, which should presumably
evoke thunderous, well regimental yell
ing whenever called for, but the stu
dents weren't yelling. In many cases
they gave the cheer leaders "the bird"
College spirit seemed to be dying.
Cheer Leaders In Despair.
A crowd of only 500 students and
alumni turned out for a Yale mass
meeting on the night before Yale
Harvard game and Tad Jones spoke his
mind publicly about such q decline IN
interest. A Harvard foot ball team left
Cambridge for game in the Far West
and only a handful of rooters went
down to the station to "see the team
off," And the Harvard Crimson" in
stead of deploring such showing, re-
piled to critics with an editorial, which
intimated that possibly there was lot
of buncombe in artificially stimulated
mass meetings and send-offs. 1t might
have been expected that undergraduate
editors all over the country would have
Jumped on such blasphemy with both
feet-terming it Harvard "high-hat-
ting" A few did so, but there were
a surprising number who went along
in agreement with the Crimson" edi-
torial and added interesting ideas to
their own maxine.
One undergraduate editor wrote: "Or-
ganized cheering at big games has be-
come too much part OF the show put
on to enlarge gate receipts. It has be-
come commercialized and the students
have become clowns and performing
bears. Student bodies are beginning to
and this out and are resenting It,"
Two years ago I attended big foot
ball game where a very ornate but very
excellent college band grabbed lot OF
liunelight away from the foot bah war
riors. The band was obviously sent out
to glorify its alma mater in Q degree
CONTINUED on Fourth Pase.)