THE COLLEGE FUND.

AS the members of the Senior class will soon be called upon to subscribe to the College Fund, it seems a suitable opportunity to put forward a few arguments against this practice of levying a subscription upon each graduating class for the benefit of the College.

As far as I can gather from the reports of the class secretaries, this subscription was started by the Class of '71, and has been continued by each class since that time. The average subscription has varied considerably in different years. In '75 it was ninety-four dollars; for the last three years it has been about fifty dollars. The amount subscribed is paid in ten annual instalments, and is finally handed over to the Corporation, to use as they think best.

A subscription like this, to which everybody is asked to contribute, ought to have some strong reasons behind it which should induce everybody to give what he can. I cannot see what these reasons are in this case, or why anybody should feel under any obligation to subscribe.

In the first place, the number of men who have plenty of money during the years which follow their graduation is comparatively small. The great majority need all the money which they can get to enable them to pursue their professional studies and to establish themselves in the world. It seems rather too much to ask such men to begin being benefactors to the College immediately after they graduate, and to tax themselves a certain amount annually for ten years to aid in its support. To be sure, it is easier to pay five dollars a year for ten years than to pay fifty dollars down; but the sum paid is none the less fifty dollars, and would buy fifty dollars worth of any commodity in the market.

It is urged that a subscription to the College Fund is a good way of repaying the College for a part of the benefit which we have received from it. This argument is plausible, but it assumes that the College has not been already paid. I cannot see that a student who pays a monopoly price of $200 a year for four years for a room which is worth $150 at the outside has any large pecuniary debt which he still owes to the College. On the contrary, I think that he should be credited with having paid already a subscription of $200. If a man, after he has established himself in the world, feels that he owes much of his success to his college education, it is a graceful act upon his part to make a gift to the College. But this is the part of the older graduates, not of the younger ones.

Of course there is no reason why those who wish to contribute to the College Fund should not do so. There are some men who can contribute liberally without feeling it. But there are many who should not be asked to contribute at all. I think that nobody should feel that he is under the slightest obligation to contribute, as he is in the case of the Class Fund, or that one man should feel obliged to subscribe because another does.

J.