NEW LEADERS

Student leadership at Lafayette College is to take on a new aspect with faculty training for undergraduate committee heads and managers of athletic teams. According to a plan put forth by the Lafayette Student Council and approved by the student body, instruction by members of the faculty in to be given student leaders in such fields as schedule making, bookkeeping, and budgeting.

Greater efficiency in the management of student affairs might occur with the inception of this experienced direction. Were it not that extra-curricular activities exist for other ends beside the mere accomplishment of office routine, the plan would have no apparent flaw. But the function and benefits of these undergraduate activities are so essentially divorced from the idea of formal instruction that any move to bring the two nearer together very much resembles an encroachment. Far more ultimate good is to be had from the self-teaching and individual assertion of free leaders than from the more systematic attention to detail possible under the long arm of the faculty. When undergraduate athletics become too large a responsibility for undergraduate direction it would seem wiser frankly to admit this and to accept graduate management. Let the student leader touch only that task which he can reach with his own hands.

This extension of paternalism at Lafayette may seem but slight; its significance lies in its marked agreement with a policy already casting its shadow over American college life. Whether it be the banning of automobiles for university students, the appointment of athletic captains and managers by coaches, the censoring of the student press, or just the classroom training of extra-curricular leaders, the effect is the same, a blow at self-reliance.