PASSE OR PASSING

According to recent speeches at a Harvard Club dinner the green college freshman is a thing of the past, the jump from school to college has ceased to be the yawning chasm it once was. This statement, as far as it goes, is true for the college freshman of today, who undoubtedly receives a truer conception and a better preparation for the four years on which he is about to embark than the youth in a similar position twenty or thirty years ago. Preparatory schools have assumed a somewhat more collegiate atmosphere, scholarship is on a high plane and college athletic contests, which most men planning to enter college attend, offer a chance to see a bit of college life at first hand, although we must admit it is a rather small part and one which may lead to a serious misconception.

But there is still one aspect to be considered in the change from school to college, one to which we may attribute the failure of many university men. If a boy has gone to high school he finds himself suddenly free of family influence, if he has gone to a private school he finds himself without the restrictions on his liberty which he encountered there. To be precipitately placed on one's own resources and forced to rely on one's own sense of responsibility after a life of prescribed conduct is disastrous to many an individual. It is foolish to assume that a boy arrives suddenly at an age which qualifies him to judge all things relating to his own conduct for himself. It is difficult to say how we may remedy a too paternalistic attitude on the part of families but private preparatory schools could administer progressively larger and larger doses of liberty during the last year or two of a student's attendance to decrease the present gap considerably.