Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/149

 bench where the loafers gather, but he did not know where the books are kept.

I am not so old fashioned nor so far removed from youth as to expect or desire that young people in college will give up these dramatic delights of which I have been speaking. All I wish to show is that they are becoming too absorbing, that they are exercising too great a domination over the lives of undergraduates. There are other relaxations and recreations which will better prepare students for their work and which are in themselves more helpful and more fully recreating. Vaudeville and photo-plays as they are in the great majority of cases presented today are suggestive of unhealthy relationships; they are often coarse, vulgar, and must tend to weaken morals and to lower ideals. Those undergraduates who make a habit of attending, waste time recklessly, squander more money than they think, and injure the real work for which they come to college. Few people whom I have seen come away from these shows happier, cleaner minded, or in any way better prepared to take up their daily work. Their scholarship and their ideals would be strengthened, I believe, if they saw fewer of such performances. The danger to the fraternity man is perhaps greater than to other men because his social relationships are closer, it is easier for him to find