Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/143



I suppose if we could get at it in any intelligible way we should find that the general opinion is that college activities are bad for a man' studies,man's studies, [sic] and that the young fellow in college who goes out for athletics or who gets on the glee club or the college paper is to that extent injuring his college work. In the same way, perhaps, since I do not myself play golf, I have never been quite able to understand how my physician, who is reasonably prosperous, can find the time to spend the most of an afternoon every few days chasing those silly white balls across a forty acre field. I should naturally expect his business to go to ruin, but it does not. Volumes of newspaper humor have been based upon the fact that the college athlete, especially the football man, is a poor student. We have all laughed blatantly at the worn joke of the college man who could pass nothing successfully but the ball. When a college man, who is in no way connected with college activities, fails very little is made of his delinquency. A personal warning, a note home to father, or the severing of his connection for a brief period, settles his case for the time being; and it is unknown or forgotten by the public. When an athlete or a man in other college activities slips up it is different. His failure is heralded from Dan to Beersheba, and may