THE GADFLY

The statement was made by President Lowell before the alumni on Graduates' Day that the success of a university should be measured by the way its undergraduates think. He pointed to the recent report of the Student Council Committee on Education as just such a standard, and one by which he was willing that his administration should be judged. A similar feather in his hat, of smaller significance, perhaps, and a plume of different hue, is the Gadfly which appears this morning. For not only is it a careful and diligent attempt to cope with problems of imminent import to the University, but it also presents an attitude quite opposite to that of the Student Council Committee, and the attitude more to be expected from explosive youth.

The magazine begins with "A Preliminary Report by the Liberal Club Committee on University Policy" Here is stated the thesis the elaboration of which completes the issue. After a careful and complete statement of the new admission ruling, expressed in question and answer form the writers conclude that the new plan is in direct opposition to the democratic traditions for which Harvard has always stood.

How far this claim is supported or justified his perhaps little bearing on the desirability of the Gadfly. But its publication creates an issue, and in the case for the more radical side there are several interesting points which are open to question. The first of the two principal dries that are struck in the treatment is the impossibility of expecting such a frail and fallible institution as a committee of the faculty to apply a rule which in itself may be inoffensive. This, for example, worries Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard who fears that he University is going to lose its emprotorgued, awkward, loose-Haibed, ill-groomed" Abraham Lincolns.

Unfortunately this is a difficulty which besets all too many educational functions. The frailty of human nature is a well-recognized failing, and any committee is liable to the grossest sort of error. But to see too great a danger in this instance in face of the repeated assurance on the part of the Committee on Admission that each applicant will be considered on his individual merits, is perhaps exaggerating pessimism.

The second of the motifs which run through the Gadfly is a rather vague and undefined protest against the word "unassimilable", as used in the Student Council report. It is held that this interpretation will exclude most of the valuable men in college, the intellectuals because they may fail to make final clubs, the Jews because they may not be athletes, the commutes because they may not add the local color that Brown gives to Harvard. The assumption is made by even Mr. Villard that the "assimilable" man is nothing but the "clubbable" man. That this betrays almost complete failure to understand the meaning of the Student Council report must be obvious. There is a curious confusion in the meanings of the word "social" which leads to a more pernicious confusion of thought. The argument for the new admission ruling on the grounds that it has a foundation in social efficacy is perfectly defensible, if by the adjective is understood the necessity for the individual to possess those qualities of character which will enable him to meet the obligations imposed upon him by the group in which he lives. Any educational institution is in the ultimate analysis a collective enterprises. Thus it is only wise that the individuals chosen to contribute to the vital functioning of a group striving to realize certain group ideals and aims; should be required not only to possess the requisite ability to harmonize with the group, but also the potentialities which may be developed by that cooperation in living and scholarship which is a university.

The Liberal Club educators fear that "too intent a search for the all-round boy may well lead to the development of a Harvard type". The very word "type" is antithetical to all-rounded-ness, implying some degree of one-sided development.

There are fallacies in the reasoning of the Gadfly. And, true to its name, it has a certain insectivorous bite which may either add to or detract from its appeal. But as an expression of opinion on a vital problem it is to be commended. It is only from the spirit and the actuality of disagreement in theory that progress comes.