CARPENTRY AND ARCHITECTURE

It seldom occurs in the small world of college journalism that an editorial policy is reversed over night, and this perhaps due to two reasons. In the first place there are no real policies to reverse; in the second, incoming boards must find their feet before acting--must talk a while before they think of anything to say.

But the recent action of the Yale News offers a striking contrast to the general rule. And this again, perhaps, because the ground was prepared. The 1924 board had attempted a definite policy of a nature calculated to undermine "paternalism" in the college. In their farewell editorial they grieved that paternalism was "still upon the throne" but prophesied hopefully that the time could not be far distant when Yale would "progress to a system of voluntary attendance at classes and church." "Then," continued the editorial, "we may look for a development of individualism and bid a fond farewell to the mold that stamps every Yale man alike." It was not perhaps a very radical program; perhaps most of its radical features appeared in their final editorial, yet it was strong enough to stir the incoming board to a staunchly conservative reaction.

Paternalism is the pabulum which the 1925 board craves. It counsels the university to constitute its monitors unofficial detectives and assist the Federal Government in enforcing the law. It stands for compulsory chapel. It urges Yale to continue as the "producer of gentlemen in the highest sense." It demands limitation of numbers.

All this is distinctly conservative, and as such may be open to praise or blame. But as conservatism it at least merits praise for being conservative. Less can be said for its more constructive "planks", urging: a course on the Bible treated as literature, a course in dramatic art open to the university, and one or two more fraternity houses. These suggestions, it may be pardonable to observe, are scarcely new to the Harvard mind, which will immediately call up the existence, for better or worse, of English 35, English 47, and the recent amalgamation of the Hasty Pudding and the DKE--things that have passed in the night.

And it is exactly in so stressing the things that pass in the night as issues to be fought for that the News shows lack of vision. Its "planks" correspond with the "planks" of political parties and with almost all-contemporary legislation in being of diurnal (or nocturnal) interest only. They suffice but for one step, they are makeshifts of reformers so eager to reform that they have no time to think.

"That we are the ones to be the creators at a critical stage in the history of this institution is a fascinating and dangerous adventure" says the Yale News, and then, like any day laborer at the luncheon hour, throws down a few planks!

But nothing more durable or inspiring than a board walk was ever built with "planks". If the present period is a critical one for American universities the ensuing one will be even more so. With the general level of wealth rising and the prestige of a college degree still unimpaired, the next ten years may bring a horde of candidates for admission to each college in the United States, a horde three times the size of any that now besieges Yale or Harvard.

What will be needed for this will be something more solid than can be built of "planks", something concrete and lasting. And what is needed now as preparation is a constructive plan, a complete scaffold, based on the foundations of actuality and rising strongly to the requisite height, lofty though that must be.

Such a scaffolding it is not only possible, but advisable, essential, for any one interested in the problem to construct. It can only be regretted that the News has turned its potential effectiveness to carpentry rather than to architecture.