SOCIAL WORK AND THE COLLEGE THE PRESENT SYSTEM

If the participation of university men in social service is to be made effective as was suggested yesterday in these columns, it is obvious that whatever organization for that purpose exists must be as efficient as human ingenuity can make it. The present Social Service Committee of Phillips Brooks House, with the best intentions fails signally in several respects.

In registering and distributing men who indicate their willingness to engage in philanthropic activities, the committee performs its work with the success that usually attends any operation of purely routine mechanics. Once the volunteer has been presented to the settlement house, however, he ceases to be of interest. He is given no idea of the problems he may expect to meet, and when he fails, as he frequently does from lack of experience or discouragement, not the slightest attempt is made to readjust him or to sustain his flagging enthusiasm. The Social Service Committee acts as a mere clearing station--not in any sense of a stimulating center of social thought. The hi-weekly reports which have been asked of settlement heads must of necessity be perfunctory, and in actual use have not served their purpose. Professional workers have time neither to train volunteers nor to account for maladjustment. In failing to provide for efficient follow-up work, the Committee has left the greater parties of its task unperformed.

The second major point on which the present organization may be sharply criticized is its failure to convey an adequate impression of the broad general significance of all social service to prospective workers. The undergraduate--usually an underclassman--goes to the committee's open meeting in the fall, and hears nothing but luke-warm banalities from amateurs. Instead of vital information from recognized authorities, he is given unintelligent generalities by local celebrities in other fields. The meeting degenerates into a series of amiable but perfunctory talks, and the enormous reservoir of idealistic enthusiasm that moved the audience to attend is left utterly untapped.

The Social Service Committee is doing an extremely limited part of its proper work well. It is leaving entirely undone almost everything that might convert undergraduate social work-at present anaemic and ineffective--into a living and vital force both in the college itself and in the larger community.