Little Book

Five years ago Clarence Cook ("Pete") Little left the University of Maine in high dudgeon because he thought that during his presidency Maine had been miserly toward education. Last year he resigned his presidency of Michigan because his ''methods handling situations dealing with invests of private donors, political interets, local interests and alumni interests"

were "not consistent with policies which the Board of Regents deems wise" The American Society for the Control of Cancer was glad to make him its managing director.

At Michigan President Little put into effect many a controversial idea of his own in matters of athletics, student housing student vice pedagogy. Last week, any alumnus familiar with Michigan affairs could discern many a parallelism between events in President Little's administration and his observations in a book on the U. S. College./-

Excerpts of Little impressions, interpretations and criticisms of campus fauna and their problems:

Fraternities. "ln the eyes of many alert and progressive educators the fraternities stand today in a very serious and weak position. So far have they failed to cooperate or to live up to their possibilities and ideals that ... the fraternity has frequently been the most powerful organ-ized source of moral misbehavior on the campus."

Parties. "One of the best ways to leave certain regions of the chapter house free for informal activity of an unsupervisable nature during house parties is to appoint a 'steering committee' of students. The members of this committee take turns in flattering and cajoling the house mother and in occupying her mind with high and noble thoughts for whatever length of time is deemed desirable. Not only is this of immediate value but if by chance the entertainment be gastronomic and sufficiently prolonged and varied, it may produce results so vital to the ancient lady that she is not able actively to patrol the chapter house for some days.

"There has developed on the part of students a delightfully informal custom of coming (either sober or intoxicated) uninvited to dances at various chapter houses. This is done so extensively as to tax the capacity of the house, and so make dancing even more like the preliminaries of wrestling than either fashion or comfort dictates. It also happens that when those who desire to enter unbidden are ardent males without escort they at times push in window sashes, glass and all, or break outer doors from their imitation handwrought hinges.

"To protect the 'brothers' and their chosen partners from such incursions, the fraternity has been forced to resort to the employment of a group of noble individuals whose usefulness, a few short years ago, seemed gone forever. These are 'bouncers' of that simple and primitive anti-alcoholic ardor that cleared the saloon of 'bums' when those gentlemen by raucousness or unseemly act impeded normal intellectual discussion or progress of any worthy cause."

Administration. "Faculty dictates are frequently enforced with just as much asperity and lack of balance as the orthodox zealot ever displayed in roasting a witch."

Co-Education. "If and when the high schools and colleges devise methods which select and retain their students more wisely, arouse in the great majority of them real intellectual interest . . . and equip them for life more skilfully and promptly, co-education at those ages might conceivably be advisable."

Politics. "The degree to which governing bodies of some institutions can stand punishment for the sake of increased wealth is amazing. They can even encourage further inroads in matters of academic freedom and educational procedure by donors who have actually for years been interfering personally in the appointment of personnel, and in the detailed administration of educational units in the government of which they have legally no right, and intellectually, no qualifications."

/-THE AWAKENING COLLEGE-- W. W. Norton & Co., Inc. ($3).

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