THE CLASS OF 1932

It is the fashion to define Harvard College swiftly, for Freshman instruction, and this is an impossible thing. But in the days when the epigram ruled the drawing-room someone said: "Boston is not a city, it is a state of mind." In its pristine application the truth is a waning one, perhaps, but refitted to that other shoulder of the New England tradition, Harvard College, it somes nearer to a summary than any epigram should.

From the scores of articles about Harvard that are written every year for public consumption, from the discussions in the Harvard Graduates' Magazine, from the educational controversies of the Advocate and the epistolary tempests of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin, it is clear that Harvard men are almost fiercely interested in their College, that they keep focused upon it a critical attention of peculiar intensity. The healthiness of so constant an inward direction of the critical eyes has been doubted; it has even been named morbid, a kind of introversion. If this were so, the alumni themselves could be counted on to make the most of it. The state of mind that can result thus seems worthy of examination, and the presence of the class of 1932, already composite with three other stages of development, gives pertinence to some conjectures on the future of that class.

There are few groups more miscellaneous than a Freshman class. This is true of any college. But at Harvard there is concomitant miracle in the fact that there are few groups more miscellaneous than a Senior Class on Commencement Day. The Freshman who, during the next three days plans the details of an apparently all important schedule, cannot by any exercise of academic scrupulousness be sure of benefiting from Harvard. Four years are fleeting, and upon him they will leave no mark that is ineradicable at the hands of environment and fortune. Success depends, quite completely, upon his degree of accessibility to what Harvard offers. The Freshman fixes this degree himself, and it is the pitche of his college life. If it is well fixed, the Freshman can be sure that his useful individualisms will have been canalized, and that whatever admiration he had for the surface symbols of Harvard will have been replaced by a sense of a tradition that needs replenishment to keep it alive.

The Freshman's expectations of Harvard vary with the individual. These days of advice and guidance are deceptive in their warmth. The Freshman may begin to believe that they are integral with the Freshman year, whereas they are expressions only of its first three days. After that Harvard comes to no man. It is possible to cloister the mind in expectation of interested visitation from without. This visitation never comes. In few colleges can a man so invulnerably make his room his castle. Hereafter, then, the Freshman must be prepared to do all the seeking for himself, and to remain quite untouched and unsuccessful as a college man, though he may become a graduate, if he wants to be sought.

The opposite pole of attraction, to which an equal number of extremists are inexorably drawn each year, is the outside activity. Excepting only athletics, outside activities have been enjoying a steady decline in health at Harvard during the past two years. Favor has turned to restricted outside activity, concentrated on one or at most two lines of endeavor. The activities themselves have benefited by a purge of triflers, and in managership competitions of the socially ambitions. The belief has gained strength that the by-products of study, mysterious as they are in origin, are worth more than the uncertain experience of undergraduate activity. The sacred practise of deliberately "making contacts" has gone under the hammer. It is perhaps unnecessary to add that at Harvard the Big Man in His Class has died, and that there have been no heirs.

Today Harvard College presents a fourfold outlook to the world, the Class of 1932 has quadrangled what would otherwise be a shapeless figure. No longer a hypothesis, it has become the Freshman Class. Though repetition of the fact have a familiar ring, it is yet necessary. Its first pronouncement was a charged to the Class of 1932. At that moment the name of Harvard was delivered into its hands.

Harvard College greets the Class of 1932 into what is sure to be for both a rich and happy identity.