Transcript Suggests Paternalism.

Without intending affront to anyone, the Quadrangler would like to suggest to the editors of college newspapers that they devote most of their time at their coming convention at Harvard to find a way to make their journals fit to read. Some of the college papers are eyesores typographically, others read as though they were edited by grammar school students and still others, at best nothing more than glorified bulletin boards, betray a striking lack of initiative on the part of their managers. The influence, for good or evil, which a college newspaper possesses is not always appreciated. What effect it has upon the students of the college need not be seriously considered. But what effect it has upon students in preparatory schools is a thing that should not be lost sight of by the college authorities. Most of our big high schools and private schools are favored with exchange copies of college newspapers. The practice is a pleasant one but some colleges, if they think anything at all of their reputation, ought not to permit it to continue.

Any movement looking to faculty control of college papers would probably be howled out of court as unwarranted interference with free speech and individual initiative. And yet it is by no means certain that some form of paternalism would not be desirable. The Quadrangler is not disposed to quarrel with those who assert that the average professor, with his exact mind and his curious notions of what the public ought to know, is ill-fitted to run a newspaper but he does contend that something ought to be done to insure the use of decent English in news stories and at least an attempt at a reasonable continuity of policy and purpose. Consider the case of the Princetonian and the Harvard Crimson. During the first semester of the college year the Princetonian was violently in favor of the extermination of the university's club system. Since March 1, it has been opposed to the movement fostered by Richard Cleveland and the other reformers. Why? Simply because the editorial board has changed. A new board means a complete reversal of policy, all within the space of a single week. The change in the Crimson was similar but not quite so abrupt. It was only two years ago that Harvard's daily was in every sense a pacifist organ. Though it does not admit it, the paper today is a militant among militants. --Boston Transcript.