Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/201



two sorts of activities in college life which invariably make the front page are the activities of athletics and the activities of social life. Athletics, of course, occupies the center of the stage, but the "fusser" is a close second to the athlete when those engaged in college activities are bidding for first mention in the newspapers. In the case of these two activities, as in many another, prominence brings a flood of adverse criticism, and the two things in the life of the undergraduate student of to-day in the big universities which are most severely railed at and criticized by the newspapers and by the public in general are inter-collegiate athletics and the students' social life.

Everybody, including those who live in college towns and those who are in the state at large, seem to agree that the social life of the undergraduate in college is excessive, that he goes too much; in fact it is quite generally believed by a great many that his life consists of very little else than social pleasure, and that he spends his time not in study, as he should do, but in running from one social orgie to another. The young women, especially at a co-educational institution where there are usually several times as many men as women, are thought to be intemperate in social matters to the extent of breaking down the health of a large percentage of them