Yale Considers Pros and Cons of Division Into Small Colleges

The following dispatch treats of the article published in the current Yale Alumni Weekly, discussing the application of the small college system to Yale. The article was called forth by the recent recommendation of the Harvard Student Council Committee on Investigation of Education in the University. That the plan would not be a suitable solution for conditions at Yale is the opinion expressed by the editors of the Weekly.

New Haven, Conn., May 22.--Yale must find an element of social solidarity to replace that which was lost when required chapel was abolished, according to the Yale Alumni Weekly. Editorially it suggests remedies to meet the situation, declaring that Harvard's solution of small college units, like those at Oxford and Cambridge, will not do. The Weekly also says that the Yale secret society system, which alone remains of elements of the Yale social life, is unequal to the demands of the present situation. The Weekly advances no constructive remedy, but says, in summing up the existing condition:

"We referred last week to the need of finding some way to retain the old element of solidarity in undergraduate life, which was a feature of daily chapel that meant much to many Yale men. The question is of course, how we can regain that old solidarity under conditions where the very force of numbers is at the base of the problem. In the three classes of the college there now are over 1400 men, and as things are going there will be 1500 in the near future. Thirty years ago there were 1150 men in the four classes. There was a solidarity in the latter case, due to the fact that the undergraduates quite generally knew each other and in a given class were all acquainted.

Intimacy Forbidden by Numbers

"It is hardly likely that all of the men, or any large proportion of them, in a class of 500 can know each other in the same intimacy today. In fact, this is generally conceded by those who are close enough to undergraduate life to understand what the conditions really are. There are too many men, and the three years are too short, for general acquaintance; the tendency is therefore to split up into smaller units within a class, thus bringing into the situation another new element which, from the older point of view, is perhaps not quite satisfactory.

Harvard and Yale share in the discomforts of this situation, the former perhaps more because of the looser class lines that for years have been a feature at Cambridge.

At Yale we still have the class, and it will take more than an increase in numbers entirely to wipe out that traditional division. But at Harvard they have been trying to work out a solution of the large college problem, the student council committee on education proposing to the university that a group of small college units be formed, such as grew up historically at Oxford and Cambridge. The Harvard undergraduates have been voting on this, and have declined to back their council on the plan in this first public consideration of it. It is certainly not a solution that would be acceptable to Yale.

Crowding College Hurts Sheff

"Not only for the reasons just given, is the recent increase in numbers in Yale College fundamentally an undesirable thing; it has reacted unfavorably by overcrowding the college at the expense of Sheff, and was, of course, the origin of the chapel change, in that it was the lack of seating accommodation in Battell that led to the alternate-chapel plan of last year which in turn resulted in a reconsideration this year of the whole chapel matter and its recent abolition. One reason for this overcrowding of the college was the transplanting of the select course under its new horticultural designation of the Ph. B. course in Yale College by which one student could get his Yale College degree without Latin while his roommate got his B. A. with it.

Group Camaraderie Gone

"With over 210 men, or 25 per cent of the freshman class electing the Ph. B course in the college, and 360 men or 44 per cent, the B. A. and the remaining 19 per cent, choosingly for engineering and 11 per cent, for science, all results in but 244 men going to Sheff as against 560 to the college. This in itself is a considerable factor in he lack of unity, which the college undergraduates now feel, and which a good many alumni would like to see changed to the older conditions.

"A class that numbers over 500 men is a small college in itself, and is too unweildy for that intimate group comradeship within a class which was so fine a thing in the old and recent Yale, and which is the backbone of our alumni life. If there is any serious danger that the reorganization that preceded President. Angell's coming, so changed the balance that the old class solidarity is going, something ought to be done to get it back. The fact that chapel now is gone is an added reason why this should be looked into. For chapel at least brought the upper-class undergraduates together and assembled the 850 freshmen as a social group.

"With no ready means of meeting each other en masse as classmates in the old sense, there remains the fraternity system as the only remnant of the older social Yale that contributes to solidarity and common interest. And how are these institutions functioning in this respect? It is obvious that, with classes running to over 500 men, they cannot be functioning in the old sense at all. We are speaking now of the Junior class situation. When there were 275 men in the Junior class there were three fraternities of 36 men each, and a fourth with 20, that is, nearly half of the class had social opportunity. Today, with six or seven fraternities taking no more men each, and classes of 500 Juniors, it is evident on the face of the figures that a good deal less than one-half can 'make' the fraternities.

Fraternities Too Restricted Now

"In the older day not all but most of the men who were eligible for fraternity membership had the opportunity. But, out of 500 men, not more than 200 have that opportunity today on the first elections. Either the Junior fraternities will have to consider the advisability of taking more men each, or there will be a need of more fraternities. That much the same situation extends over into the new Senior year, which now has 150 men instead of the 250 of 30 years ago, is no less open to study. If the college is to go on adding into itself in numbers through the choices of Freshman year than recently have tended away from Sheff (and we hope that this is not to be the case), there will sooner or later have to be a reconsideration of the social system to catch up with the change."