Balm

For Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn, La-Follette of college presidents, there is balm in Galesburg, Ill. Last week, the young men and women of Knox College stuck placards about their campus, issued a statement: "We believe Mr. Meiklejohn to be the exponent of the liberal college and believe he is indispensable to Knox if Knox is to maintain the leadership of liberal colleges which she has attained through the activities of preceding administra- tions."

In other words, undergraduate Knox wanted Dr. Meiklejohn for her President when her present head, Dr. James L. McConaughy, departs after Jan. 1 to become President of Wesleyan University. It seemed doubtful, however, that Dr. Meiklejohn would be more than flattered and gratified by this informal invitation. Aroused to action by the losing fight he fought in 1923 when, as President of Amherst, he sought to put in effect there his liberal principles of education (TIME, June 25, 1923 et seq.), Dr. Meiklejohn has been plan- ning an "independent" university of his own (TIME, Sept. IS).

"Dream Fulfilled"

A century ago, the guest was the aged French general, the Marquis de Lafayette. Last week, the guest was the aged French ambassador, M. Jean Jules Jusserand. The trowel used was the one with which President Washington laid the cornerstone of the Capitol.* The rites observed were those colorful Masonic ones which were just being formulated in Washington's day.

After they had laid the cornerstone--and it was for George Washington University's** new law school building, in Washington, D. C.--they commemorated the university's first commencement exercises with a centennial ceremony, including the dedication of a Lafayette memorial alcove in the university library. William Mather Lewis, George Washington University's President, declared the day notable.

Ambassador Jusserand declared that the great university of which George Washington dreamed is now realized in the school which bears his name.

Dr. William Bruce King, of the board of trustees, reminded his hearers that one-tenth of all U. S. law students are assembled in Washington, that the new building, Stockton Hall,*** is to be the largest law-school building in the country.

Dream

Ten years ago, one Mrs. Theodate Pope Riddle, Farmington, Conn., architect, dreamed a dream. Having capital and tenacity, she now beholds the scenery abuilding to make her dream come true.

This was the dream of Mrs. Theodate Pope Riddle: Some 2,000 acres of meadow and rough woodland just west of Hartford, Conn., cut by boiling trout streams, bordered by the Farmington River. Built thereon, a rough-hewn stone village, copied after old Colonial villages, with heavy-timbered gables, hand-joined by wooden pegs; with split-oak roof-trees, slate-slabbed roofs and other backwoods atmosphere. In this village, a population of hardy schoolboys, citizen-students of Avon College (a school and junior college, preparatory to universities).

The citizen-students would cultivate their own fields round about the settlement, would work in carpenter shops, smithies, the village bank and in their own autonomous village government, including a Council of Seven (seniors only) of executive authority, and various stewardships for public safety, welfare, health, etc. A citizen-student prosecuting attorney would cross-examine malefactors brought before a citizen-student judge by citizen-student policemen, defended by a citizen-student public advocate.

Two years of compulsory Latin and a gallery-full of modern paintings would make the village a cultural cen- tre. The hardy life would "make the boy of 12 self-reliant, the boy of 14 resourceful, the boy of 16 persevering."

In spite of the rather lavish plan, tuition would be kept down to that of other preparatory schools. The whole would be a memorial to Mrs. Riddle's father--the late Alfred Atmore Pope of Farmington, Conn. Last week, it was announced that the buildings at Avon College were rising rapidly. It was announced also that Dr. Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard, approved the whole idea as "a bold and far-looking experiment." The new school would "revive the colonial spirit."

Introspection

It is in the air. It is everywhere. No one is satisfied with anyone, except, now and then oneself. The educational world is introspective and the criticism of the day is a criticism of impatience. Uneasy folk upbraid one another for not achieving that which the demon of an age of externals longs for but will never achieve--cultured calm, a philosophical detachment.

At Ann Arbor, Mich, restless with the knowledge that something is agley in undergraduatedom, President Marion LeRoy Burton of Michigan University called to him Robert C. Angell of the Sociology Department. He sent Dr. Angell on a quest. Last week Dr. Angell returned, after talking with many another uneasy educator, and many young men and women, earnest no end and either utterly complacent or badly worried over themselves. Dr. Angell wrote a report: "College is no longer a place for those who wish to become cultured. It is a social prac- tice ground. Men and women come here to make friends and to carry on mutual undertakings that require a certain amount of polish. . . . What with athletic practice, committee meetings, play and musical rehearsals, moving pictures, dances, intercollegiate games, and--what is worse--hours and hours of idle talk about these and other di- versions, little time is left for the principal purposes of college study. . . .

"Three forms of achievement are coveted which give immediate and obvious glory--places on athletic teams, editorships of student publications, presidencies of student organizations. These are sought with unflagging zeal and scholarship is relegated to a subordinate position. . . . The evil influence of many alumni in glorifying the less important features of college life is well known. . . . Many a father holds forth upon his son's performances at college exactly as he would upon those of a promising young three-year-old in his stable."

Concerning which, said The Michigan Daily (undergraduate newspaper): "Many University students ought to be seriously jolted. . . . It is impossible to deny these indictments." Said The Daily Princetonian (Princeton's daily): "The explanation for this state of affairs can be perhaps partially explained by the viewpoint which many college men hold, as expressed by W. H. Cowley, a former member of Dartmouth's student committee on the curriculum: 'Our professors stand on platforms like little gods and speak in pale blue voices, and when blue book time comes, we regurgitate. . . . Phi Beta Kappa scholarship is all pure memory work, parrot education.'

"Both men protest too much. . . . But both statements have a basic foundation of truth. We must admit that a large part of American college life consists of charm collecting."

At Madison, Wis., the unrest took a particular form. Scott H. Goodnight, dean of men at the University of Wisconsin, spoke roundly to the sophomore council: "A tradition is being established outside of Wisconsin . . . that we are a bunch of cake eaters.^1 Does not our record of parties and dances go to substantiate this tradition? There are 80 fraternities and sororities on the campus that put on a dance or party on the average of once a month. There are ten fraternities that have an average of two dances a month and one . . . an average of three."

Wisconsin undergraduates agreed. Said an undergraduate press correspondent: "Many of the men blame co-ed ideals for the plethora of social affairs."

Said a woman student, allegedly "a leader of the Intellectuals": "The mothers regard the university as a good matrimonial bureau, and accordingly they send their daughters here."

At Middletown, Conn., the unrest appeared turbulent in the report of an intercollegiate conference held last month at Wesleyan University. This report, issued last week, coolly estimated that from 40 to 60% of the college students of the day are morons. The word "dumbbell"^2 was also used. Over this estimate, Prof. Charles Gray Shaw, of New York University, mused skeptically: "As a matter of fact," said he, "the students have more avidity for knowledge than their teachers can boast. . . . If they do not learn, it is because they are not taught. The conversation of students is often of a low grade. So is that of their teachers." Prof. Shaw declared that the student of the day inclines to the unemotional attitude of Leopold and Loeb, Chicago perverts; that Phi Beta Kappa, hierarchy of U. S. scholarship, is as useless as its emblem, a watch key.

In the December American Mercury, the unrest became drastic. Prof. Richard Burton, of the University of Min- nesota, took Why Go To College for a text and preached the exclusion from seats of learning, not only of the "cake eater" (see above), but also of that "monument of misapplied energy" and "machinelike assiduity," the dig, grind, poler, swatter, the "young man or woman of mediocre or worse calibre who lacks initiative, personality, creative energy. . . ." Prof. Burton, a man evidently conversant with culture in many forms, was scornful of that form which is "a sort of contagion; you get it by being exposed to it."

Significance. Prof. Burton to the contrary notwithstanding, it is highly probable that Culture, the yearning for which seems to be the maggot in so many brains today, is a quality which is not painfully conscious of itself. It is an effluvium created by economic, political, historical conditions. It is commensurate with these conditions and, like piety or courage, cannot be truly heightened by exasperated talk.

Barbers

Last month, freshmen at the Univer- sity of Louisiana, their polls shorn clean by hilarious upperclassmen, descended upon the Baton Rouge (La.) High School, dragged forth students and lady teachers, scissored their hair from their polls "to get even" (TIME, Nov. 24).

Last week, inspired by their Louisiana contemporaries, upperclassmen at the University of Mississippi gave way to a similar passion. They pinioned freshmen, brandished scissors and razors, rendered nude 75 crania. Chancellor Alfred Hume ordered an investigation, expelled ten of the student-barbers for their quaint conception of discipline.

*On Sept. 18, 1793. The interior of the original building was destroyed by fire in 1814 when the British occupied Washington. The building was restored and completed by 1827. The House and Senate extensions were completed in 1857 and 1859 respectively.

**The University has an enrollment of nearly 5,000 students drawn from all parts of the U. S. and from foreign countries. Besides the College of Liberal Arts, it has a Graduate School, Colleges of Engineering, Medicine, Pharmacy, Law, a School for Nurses and a Teachers' College.

***Named for the late Rear Admiral Charles Herbert Stockton, president of the university from 1910 to 1918.

^1 "Cake-eater,"--male equivalent of "flapper," derived from the species' penchant for, and dexterity at, mixed tea-parties.

^2 "Dumb-bell"--One afflicted with an obfuscated mentality.