ROYAL PREROGATIVES

The influence which alumni sentiment exerts on the policies of a university is as constant as it is often omnipotent. Distinctly an indigenous development, this force represents a form of graduate regency which is perennially decried by those who find its weight so irksome that they can see only its occasional misapplications.

In a delightfully humorous article entitled "The Divine Right of the Alumni", appearing in the current Independent, Mr. Frederick L. Allen '12 pictures a loyal alumnus cherishing a fond affection for an alma mater he no longer understands and blundering incompetently about without exercising "a cubic millimeter of his brain." There are many men who help to create alumni opinion in just the manner Mr. Allen describes, though such a portrait is more caricature than a likeness. Amusing as the picture is, there is always a basis of truth in satire; and undergraduates who later will swell the great body of alumni will do well to reflect on the matter lest they in turn may offer a target for well-directed, if kindly, arrows.