INDIVIDUALITY

While Yale has had its Freshman-Sophomore rushes and the Sophomores of Princeton and Columbia have reaped a harvest from the sale of Freshman hats and rule cards, Harvard, virtually alone among all the Eastern colleges, has no such customs. Many upper classmen and even freshmen regret it, while graduate students from other institutions maintain that Harvard undergraduates never experience what they commonly term "college life". The criticism is well founded; certainly that kind of college life is conspicuously absent; it runs counter to a fundamental principle of the University.

For years, especially since the presidency of Charles W. Elliot, who inaugurated voluntary chapel and the now widely copied elective system, Harvard has stood for individualism among the students. It makes no attempt to establish an invariable type, either intellectual, religious, or social, to which all must conform or be rejected. Strong and hard to combat are the influences which shame individuality, in matters of thought, dress or manner. Freshman regulations tend to destroy it as well as the prevalent habit of scoffing at anything new or different. No real need of such regulations exists: in the past have not Harvard Freshman classes prospered without them? Why, then, should anyone regret their absence? Of course excessive roughness must be smoothed; but too much milling robs the wheat of its strength. The position which the college authorities and the majority of the students have taken in this matter is both wise and advanced. Stupid uniformity is the curse of most societies, but freedom of thought and action is an exceedingly good corner stone upon which to found a great university.