Final Lap

With the registration of the eleven hundred-odd men who are expected to file through Memorial Hall today the College will conclude the major part of its preliminary activity for what is to be the last regular Summer Session--for some years at least. Hereafter the June to September ratrace will revert to its pre-war form in which it was chiefly an opportunity for spinsterish school marms to sip a few heady draughts from a traditionally masculine fountain of knowledge.

Even the present session is likely to be a pallid reflection of an ordinary term. Many of the first string instructors are in Europe or otherwise absent. An enrollment of less than fifteen hundred is hardly enough to support anything more than token extra curricular activities. Sports there will be, but only for the participants, not for the spectators. They will be extremely informal. Publications will be scarcely better off. The "Advocate" and "Radditudes" are not scheduled for the summer. Such activities as remain functional will be operating on a reduced schedule.

The dearth of other interests leaves academics as almost the sole outlet--with the exception of what is likely to be a heavy social schedule--for collegiate energy. If the past two terms have been characterized by an "unhealthy emphasis" on grades, the present term may well produce an even higher level of scholastic absorption. In an ordinary term this pre-occupation might be a matter for concern on the part of the administration. But the Summer Term of 1947 is not and has never been represented as an ordinary term. It is the last gasp of the war time acceleration, adapted to an unusual situation. And the student body is also of an unusual calibre. Its age and experience give it a direction and purposefulness not customary in undergraduates. It has business and social contacts more extensive than those of an ordinary college class. And because many of the men in college this summer are working for a definite goal beyond their sheepskin and because they have already acquired many of the social abilities that are an intangible part of a college education, the almost necessary shortcomings of the Summer Session will not be too strongly missed.