UNPLEASANT ATTENTION

The letter sent out yesterday to all the alumnae of Smith College by the officers of the Alumnae Association, is a plea for support that reveals clearly the distressing position in which that college finds itself as a result of the notoriety that attended the disappearance of Miss Frances Smith. Embraced by rumor and the zealous press, that institution has been unusually subject to the stupidities that characterize such attentions. "Alumnae want to know," the letter states, "Whether it is true that there has been a 'reign of terror' on the campus and whether, as has been said, twenty-six other girls have disappeared." Denying categorically that the college is a hot bed of radicalism, atheism, and immorality, the bulletin says further, "It is apparent that current magazines and daily papers are at present subjecting all colleges to sharp and often undeserved criticism, and that Smith has seemed to come in for a particularly heavy share." The charge of immorality which is mentioned, is the outcome of the country wide publicity given a questionnaire on sex distributed three years ago in a course in advanced psychology at the suggestion of students, and without the knowledge of the higher college authorities. But the news added meat to the theories of persons already convinced of the seditious and iconoclastic tendencies of the colleges, and it was consumed with relish. The recent tragedy, in some inexplicable way, was held to confirm such opinions.

It is a significant revelation of the public's ready acceptance of anything which may damage the repute of higher education, that such charges should become so widely believed that a college of the standing of Smith should find it necessary to refute them, and appeal to the alumnae for further controversion. A typical attack, called "Why the College Sap?" may be found in this month's Ladies Home Journal. For there it reaches the mothers of potential college students, to assail them with serious doubts of the desirability of the college influence. In the optimistic belief that virtue eventually triumphs, this wearisome distortion by persons seldom qualified to speak, can be no great source of alarm. But concentrated on Smith College which has been singularly and blamelessly unfortunate in the associations gathered to its name, even with the loyal support of the alumnae, it does represent a most unjust and severe persecution.