NOT BAD, NOT GOOD

It was with a discussion of "the new social code of the student and its effects on academic life" that Mr. R. L. Duffus in the New York Times Magazine concluded his survey of the problems of American colleges. And because he chose merely to be an optimistic reporter of the surface facts, this conclusion was something of an anti-climax. The effect of club life and self support on undergraduate democracy he felt to be a dangerous subject better set forth without injudicious comment. At Harvard," he said, "it is taken for granted that a certain social status in the outside world is essential to election in certain societies." In the matter of manners he only suggested the state of affairs described by the widely touted Miss Cabot, and invested them with a gay cameradie. In point of morals, however, Mr. Duffus let himself pass judgement. His is the opinion, now becoming widespread, that the undergraduate is no better or worse than his predecessors, that he is "fundamentally sound." The student here at Harvard is credited with no Freudian repressions while studying. "Even now the Harvard boy conspicuously ignores the feminine intruder, though he has to put up with Radcliffe girls... But he does look forward to the feminine company of his festive weekends with unmitigated pleasure."

The intelligent undergraduate, too, believes that he is "fundamentally sound". But without being a Dr. Straton, he is not sanguine in the opinion of one school of adult commentators, that his contemporaries, with all their frankness and freedom, are still as strongly supporting the moral conventions. They are not, even if they have no spokesman to admit it. The precocious Miss Benson has discussed the subject in Vanity Fair, but she really is too young. Without being accused of ventriloquism, Judge Ben Lindsay has drawn startling statements from young Cleveland malefactors, and wielded them for his purpose. But the educated youth, fearing the sensationalism that dogs his step, has chosen to be silent. This is no occasion for creating precedent. Indeed, one may believe that undergraduate drinking is Epicurean rather than vicious, that the attitude toward delinquencies of Mr. Duffus' "other sort" are reasoned if not Comstockian. But as far as the fact goes, the optimistic critics must be reminded that three all important factors in the upholding of the old code were conscientious acceptance of conventional morality, religious scruple, and fear rising out of ignorance. And today--those bulwarks have lost their strength.