Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/89

 Rh charge should not be made lightly, for those in responsible place are usually the last to hear of irregularities. At the same time, one who reads the sporting page of a great daily paper and considers the pettifogging disputes of committees representing contesting institutions can not resist an uneasy feeling that the lowering of morale has not stopped with the student body.

College students are quite as willing to yield to temptation as are other young men; some of them indeed, like other men, are ready to go somewhat out of their way to fall into temptation. This much must be conceded; yet no one would regard that as a ground for opening a subway tavern on the campus or for licensing a high-grade gambling outfit in the library building. Students, like others, are apt to show decided disinclination for the work in hand; yet no college official would announce that as justification for encouragement to neglect study. But to encourage membership in college organizations of to-day is to encourage neglect of study. The active members are required to maintain respectable standing in class-room work, though no ordinary man can do this, if the college course be what it is supposed to be, without interfering with his duties, which students in many places evidently think more important than studies. And the college authorities seem to agree with the students, for they permit glee clubs to sing at evening concerts near and far away; they permit teams to undergo training and to absent themselves—all in such fashion that the men must fall behind in their work, if the work be what it purports to be. Yet these men get through and all the students know it.

The incongruity of the conditions affords constant play for newspaper wit, and colleges are regarded popularly as agglomerations of associations with a teaching annex. Colleges receive great attention from the newspapers on pages devoted to sporting news, very little elsewhere except in columns devoted to wit and humor. The coach is much more important than the professor of Latin.

It is impossible for college authorities to escape responsibility for the conditions and all the evils connected with them; any attempt to evade that responsibility is, to say the least, unmanly. Intercollegiate contests are recognized as part of collegiate operations; the students' control is nominal, the institution's control is absolute. Fields for athletic sports have been provided at great cost and they are well equipped with 'grand stand' and 'bleachers'; the gymnasium with all its paraphernalia for gymnastic contests is, at times, almost as imposing as the library building; and the excellence of the equipment is set forth duly in official publications. Qualifications for active participation in the organizations are determined by the authorities who supervise the schedules of engagements and in some instances even the pecuniary affairs.