Henderson daily dispatch. (Henderson, N.C.) 1914-1995, 1937-04-20
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tian Gauss, of Princeton, asserts in
an article for one of the big-circula-
ton nickel weeklies that young peo-
pie in the colleges these days are
vastly different lot from what they
were only a few years back He says
they have improved greatly They
study hard now; they care little for
highjinks; they want to belong to
Phi Beta Kappa instead of to the
football team. They're subdued, seri-
GUS. Woodworking.
had occasion the other day to go
up Columbia University way and I
got to peering at the undergraduates
l passed. Perhaps it was suggestion,
but the boys and girls did seem to
move with a graver mien than those
of any time. Snatches of conversa-
ton revealed that they were discuss
ing strikes, the Supreme Court, the
possibility of forgetting. One pair of
wastrels were talking about Pom
poon's chances in the Derby-but per-
haps they weren't collegiates after ALL
one of them was laughing.
Good Dean Gauss believes that this
widespread assumption of RESPONSE
the good. He mentions the fact that
the statue of the Founder is seldom
hoisted in the dead of night to the
roof of the gymnasium, as of yore.
The college treasurers are delighted
to discover that bills for breakage,
once balfooned by sheer animal spirits
have dropped to negligible proper
tions. This, too, in the eyes of the
Dean, is highly gratifying statistic.
1t is certainly true that you see
young people study algebra, irregular
French verbs and double-entry book
keeping on the subways much more
frequently than you see them engag-
ed in horesplay or irritation. I think
the Optometrists should be doing a
lond-office business, for the percent
appears to be about twice what it was
when I dozed on Parnassus
Of course it isn't the right-think-
ing way to feel, but I can't help be-
ing little depressed by all this So
briefly. I can't help feeling that strikes
and jobs and economics will be with
them from now on. The callow and
absurd and unrecapturable lift that
comes to a boy Of nineteen in the
act of painting the statue of Mercury
green in front of the chem lab-that
comes from cutting classes to take
some little baggage with blue eyes
and no brains to a dance a hundred
miles away-4these things very de-
finitely won't be with him from now
on. l can't advocate dissipation or
vandalism-1Sut human beings need
old foolish memories to balance and
requite their hearts when memories
are no longer to be manufactured
1t was favorite excuse for not
studying, in my time, to remark the
fact that the notorious grinds ended
UP in the poorhouse and the campus
playboys tended ito acquire honors
and completeness. We never quite
believed it, deep down. We expected
we would discover we were coasting
on sophistry, on an easy paradox, but
after we left school for one reason or
another (and just for the sake of the
record, / was lad who earned a good
ly portion of my college expenses)
we began to discover bit by bit, that
there was evidence for just that
paradox
The catch, of course, when we dis
covered Phi Beta Kappas clerking be-
hind counters where we paid our gas
bills, or honor men supervising wait
resses in chain cafeterias, was that
not all of them arrived, at twenty
eight or so, at such thin pickings.
Most of them did better; some much
better But the 1ight-hearted ones,
who flunked more than they passed
and laughed more than they strove,
seemed to do all right by themselves
in about the same percentage as the
others.
1t is, perhaps, pure coincidence
that one of the top-notchers in the
same issue which contained Dean
Gauss article was a man who had
gone to school with me. He was so
far from being a grind that it took
him, if I remember correctly, some
six years to graduate. He kept a key
in his room and you could not have
lured him into a discussion of Eco
Monies outside the classroom.