The Committee of Conference.

A number of the Conference Committee has been "interviewed," and what follows, though not in any sense official, is authoritative, and will serve to show our readers the present position of the committee.

There has been for some time a desire on the part of the faculty that their position in matters concerning the students should be better understood by the students, that their decisions should no longer be forced on the students without their giving the students a full knowledge of reasons and causes. Members of the faculty have continually felt that they were at cross purposes with the students, that the students misunderstood them and their motives, and that they often misunderstood the students. This desire for communication, mutual understanding and even co-operation, resulted last year in the appointment of the Committee of Conference, and all the details of the work were left to be arranged by the committee themselves.

Just how they should bring about this desired interchange of ideas, however, the committee found it no simple matter to decide. The thing ought to be done, but just how the gulf between faculty and students could be bridged over, and with a bridge that would last and offer continuous passage was not clear to the committee. They queried whether each party would not come to the conference as advocates of a side. But the great difficulty was how to get a satisfactory representation of the students. A hearing, those coming who chose, seemed to the committee out of question; the curious, the talkative, and most of the Freshman class would come, but the very men most wanted might stay away. Election of representatives by the classes would be unsatisfactory, the committee thought, as the men thus chosen would all be the same sort of men, popular men, and would really represent only a very small proportion of the students. Similar objections were found to the other plans of representation that were suggested. The committee felt that a conference which turned out a failure would do more harm than good, too great harm to risk the experiment.

The foot ball and other agitations of this year and last have been, the committee thought, the only objects of general enough interest to warrant a conference, and these have been delegated to a special committee. For this reason the committee of conference have not felt warranted in holding a meeting this year. About three weeks before the Christmas recess, however, it occurred to the committee to have a conference with the students for the purpose of discussing in the first place, as to whether such a committee is of any use, the advisability of having it at all, and in the second place as to the way of choosing student members, and as to the general machinery and running of the thing. The committee expected to hold this meeting about Dec. 17th. But alas! no one could draw up a satisfactory list of students. The President, the Dean, and three or four of the professors tried it, but everyone was dissatisfied with everybody else's list. And from a few students, to whom the lists were shown, they elicited only laughter. This made the committee feel very shaky; they thought that perhaps the conference committee is after all impracticable, and some other scheme might better be devised.

This is how the matter rests now. And as the mid-years are so near, there is little chance of a conference before March.