THE FEDERATION CONGRESS

Writers for the popular magazines will soon have another source for their colorful articles on student activities in America, for representatives of a great number of American colleges and universities are to meet, December 2, 3, and 4, at the University of Michigan in the annual conclave of the Student Federation of America. This organization, so recently founded, has within the year made such strides in organization that people sincerely interested in the activities of the modern undergraduate to help in the solving of contemporary problems in education, are expectant of more than pleasing results from the meeting at Michigan.

With no desire to standardize undergraduate activities in the various colleges, realizing that each college must, to a great degree, solve its own problems, the officers of the Federation nevertheless believe that only through cooperation, through comparison of aims and the means of their attainment, can the students in many colleges and universities of the country make their efforts toward bettering conditions at their particular colleges, in the best sense, effective.

For speakers at the gathering in December, the Federation has been fortunate in procuring President MacCracken of Vassar, Professor Meiklejohn of the University of Wisconsin, and President Little of Michigan. These men will present various views upon the main topics of the Congress The Function of a University, The Influence of Extra-Curricula Activities upon College Life, The Place of Athletics in Education. Nor are these subjects which fail either in suggestiveness or practicality. If the undergraduate is to share in the development of his own institution of learning in a same and constructive fashion, these are topics vital to his interests.

Too much is written and spoken concerning college and university affairs by those whose interest is limited to the money they can get for their published articles; too little is written, spoken, thought concerning these matters by those whose life is most closely connected with them. Student interest in affairs of college, in the eternal verities of college life, must, to be at all effective, have purpose and direction or it is doomed to futility. The Federation hopes with a national scope, augmented by a keen interest in international college and university affairs, to make such purposiveness and such directness of approach possible. In their, attempt one can find nothing to condemn, unless he be pessimistic concerning the ability of youth to help in the solving of the problems of youth, and everything to praise. All educational reform must come from within, as has been suggested in this column recently, and the Student Federation of America is working from within, adequately, and with a sanity quite to be praised.