The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1940-07-11
t5ell syndicate-wNU Service

perance, or unsuccess, or harshness
imposed upon her.
College isn't quite so serious a
step. And yet it's grave enough,
too, and mistakes made in college
years can shadow all her future
for a woman quite as deeply as
even an unfortunate marriage can.
Even the most ill-starred marriage
has about it a certain dignity. But
the girl who creeps home beaten
and destroyed from college has to
possess superhuman qualities to
bring her young, broken life back to
anything near normal again.
Groups Vary Morally.
At college Carolyn will find all
she dreams in companionship and
freedom. She will find that many of
the girls and men are fine, come
from good homes, hold to a code es-
sentially the same as that their IA
theirs and mothers knew. These love
good times, dancing, picnics, house
parties, theatricals, sports, big
games, and are continually planning
and plotting for all of them. But
they take them as rational human
beings, the men, however uncon-
sciously, thinking of all women in
the terms of their mothers and sis
tiers, and the girls well aware that
to hold the respect of desirable men
friends they have to preserve their
own. So in groups, with the right
element of brothers and sisters and
responsible persons, they go up into
the SHOWS to ski, descend to the
beaches to swim, fall in love, fall
out again, consult over finals and
seminars and extract from a glori-
Gus youthful time its very happiest
possibilities.
Carolyn will also find at college
a wild young group that mistakes
freedom for license, and familiarity
for love. She will find girls and men
who cut classes, entertain a general
scorn for teachers and for learn
ing, are at home in every night
club and roadhouse for miles, and
believe in giving free rein to the
most elementary human instincts.
The first boy she fancies will choose
some occasion when she has been
eating and drinking, petting and
dancing to excess, to convince Caro-
Ign that what all the other girls do
certainly can't be such serious
mistake, and without caring very
much Carolyn will presently find
herself involved in the usual sordid
affair.
A Sheepskin of Cynicism.
There may be moments when she
is genuinely shocked, made uneasy
by considering just how rapidly all
this has come about, but the tele-
phone ringing, and the voice of some
ringleader telling her of the new
days plans will quickly reassure
her, and she will plunge back into
the whirlpool, glad to escape the
need of analysis or giving the matter
any great consideration or any very
serious thought.
When the inevitable moment
comes to end all this, the valuable,
the irreplacable element Of her life
is destroyed. Whether she has had
only a dozen petting parties or a
hundred, one lover or six, one be-
wildered half-intoxicated evening in
a night-club or twenty, one funked
subject or ten, won't matter. She
will come home utterly disenchant-
ed, hardened, cynical. Her old
friends will not interest her, but no
town or crossroads village will be
so small but what she will find in it
the sort of superficial Bohemianism
to which college years have accus-
toned her.
Girl Must Make Own Decision.
Some colleges and all sororities
try to keep their girls under control
by means Of permissions, regula-
tons, closing hours, 'lockouts. But
these only work with the girls who
want them to work.
So the problem is strictly Caro-
lyn's. 1t is for her to decide it;
Mother and Dad can't do much.