THE COLLEGE "MAN."

AS college students consider themselves men, and are more or less indignant if that dignity be denied them, it is rather interesting to investigate the claims that many have to the title.

At one of the most prominent of the smaller colleges, a student was recently expelled for playing the game of poker; an offence of which cognizance is rarely taken, even at juvenile schools. At the same college, billiards, card-playing of any kind, and smoking are either strictly prohibited, or their practice must be carried on with secrecy. Not content with these stringent rules for protecting the virtue of the "men" under their charge, the Faculty have forbidden students going to the neighboring town without giving a satisfactory reason, and obtaining permission to do so. If the students to whom these rules apply are men, they certainly are quite able to judge for themselves as to the expediency of playing billiards and smoking; and the infantile regulations by which they are controlled are out of place and ridiculous. If, on the other hand, such rules are appropriate, the students must cease to aspire to the title of "men," when they act and are treated like boys just entering their teens.

When a college Faculty treat students in the manner we have mentioned, they cannot expect to subdue the boyish and rowdy element which is so prominent in almost all the smaller colleges. The cane and beaver rushes, the Cornell "stackings," the thousand and one absurdities which make up the amusements of such students, will remain in favor so long as the Faculties encourage them by treating their perpetrators as if they were committing a fault and not an imbecility. When a Cornell student "stacks" a room, or a Union student indulges in a cane rush, to wear a foolscap would be a much more appropriate punishment than to be suspended.

But we cannot conclude without looking at home, and considering the claims which Harvard students possess to be regarded as men. For a number of years past, but more particularly recently, the Faculty have endeavored to treat students as if they were sufficiently mature to judge for themselves in matters which concerned them personally. All unnecessary and childish rules have long been dispensed with, and a liberty of action has been granted them as great if not greater than that accorded in any other institution of learning in this country or in England. For this the Faculty have deserved, and have received, the appreciation of students. The childish habits of hazing and rushing have been entirely dispensed with, and the general improvement in tone among members of the College has been everywhere apparent. There are some respects, however, in which we are still behindhand, and occurrences occasionally take place which border upon the puerile amusements generally confined to the smaller colleges. Society initiations of a rough character originated among the boys of sixteen or seventeen who were in college when the societies were founded. Now, however, students are much older, and as the Faculty have abolished boyish regulations, we can see no reason why students should not abolish boyish customs. The performances, which some consider so courageous or witty, of blowing up a drain, or mutilating and stealing College property, show first an absence of appreciation of what constitutes gentlemanly conduct, and second, a disposition to return to the boyish and rowdy habits which have been almost wholly uprooted from our soil.

B. T.