Student Critics

The college undergraduate not infrequently considers himself competent to pass decisively on the merit of his professors. Orally he indulges in very free expressions of approval and disapproval, and no bones are broken. But when he takes to putting his views in writing, and then publishes them for all the world to read, the undergraduate critic has to be taken seriously.

Recently the Harvard Crimson, a daily newspaper conducted by undergraduates, published a collection of estimates of professors and their courses. Some were frankly unfavorable. Still more recently the undergraduate weekly of Trinity College, Hartford, vigorously criticised a speech of the dean in which that functionary had declared "it is our duty to ignore the individual and to turn out a Trinity type." Finally the student publication of Northwestern University has roundly condemned certain members of the department of English for "overemphasis of the immorality" of certain British poets and for discussion of certain intimate details of the manners and customs of the times of these merry verse-makers.

Nothing disciplinary has been done at Harvard. At Trinity the student editor has been suspended for a month. At Northwestern apologies have been demanded but none have been forthcoming.

In all these instances there may be a tendency to sympathize with the undergraduate journalists, and to feel that possibly there is merit in the criticisms offered. But one can scarcely avoid recognizing a rather impressive inequality between faculty and students basis for opinion.

Primarily and logically the relation between professor and undergraduate is that between teacher and learner. When the roles are reversed, as they are by the publication of student criticisms, the orderly course of college life is seriously disturbed.

But what are the faculties going to do about it? Gag the the college press, or formulate a rule of "nil nisi bonum do doetribus," and the self-sufficient young college man will at once assume the dignity of a martyr, and then there is no telling what bad thing may happen. Cleveland Plain Dealer.