MISLEADING STATISTICS.

The section on cutting in the last report of the Dean of Harvard College reveals a condition of undergraduate laxity concerning College engagements which, upon serious consideration, cannot but appear wholly deplorable. By means of statistics prepared at the Office, the Dean shows that on the average every man in College cuts one engagement every week throughout the College year. This makes a total of 75,220 unexcused absences.

The comment which accompanies the tables is equally pertinent: "Any system that does not leave ample time for thinking (of which the majority of students do far too little), for sports, friendships, and those 'undergraduate activities' which help so much in the development of the well-rounded man, should be condemned; but for all of these and a much higher standard of work there is ample time in the twenty-four hours of the day. The truth is that college students have the lax habit of thinking that college work and engagements should follow, not take precedence of, the pressing engagements of undergraduate activities, the social life of the College, and the outside world."

Without in the least attempting to refute such an analysis of the more evident part of present undergraduate life, for we all recognize this criticism as only too just, it seems to us that the law of averages and the conclusions possible therefrom are in this case decidedly misleading. For instance, there are a great many men in every class, of whom we never hear as accomplishing anything in so-called "undergraduate activities." They may be the men of more modest or even straitened circumstances. They come here for an education in the sense of procuring a firm intellectual foundation and of obtaining the maximum benefit from each course. Everyone will agree that such men form the real backbone of the College. Their cause is eloquent by its silence.

These men seldom cut College engagements; perhaps their record will show ten or twelve absences a year, surely all that is necessary. It would evidently be unfair to accuse this larger number of students with 32 cuts annually. But, on the other hand, there is a minority of men, many of them active in undergraduate affairs, whose continued cutting brings the average up to one per week for the whole College; and it is in this group that the present situation is really serious. Unlike their more intellectual class-mates, they are well-known, often as "good fellows," and hence their side of College life is far more obvious both to the Office and to the outsider. A small body, they distort by their prominence the true perspective of undergraduate life. To such men Dean Hurlbut's words primarily apply.