Vanishing College Traditions

It is with regret that a large number of American college men, both graduates and students, will see in the abolition of freshman cap-burning ceremonies at the University of New Hampshire a symbol of the academic times. . . . Similar time-honored ceremonies are being abolished at other colleges and universities for less valid reasons, and with them are, vanishing much of the picturesqueness of American student life.

Fence rushes, cap burnings, maypoles, class dinners and other pleasantries and exchanges between freshmen and sophomores have long constituted an integral part of the campus scene at practically every college in the land, with the possible indifferent exception of Harvard, where such juvenile foolishness has never obtained, but where private enterprise on the part of undergraduates has annually inaugurated minor breaches of the academic peace. Up to four years ago the freshman-sophomore fence rush at Yale was as much of an institution as Derby Day, and the only blot on the otherwise fair record of the class of '26 was its pathetic gesture toward dignity in abolishing it. A few black eyes and a half dozen fist fights usually resulted on these happy occasions, but these could hardly justify the doing away with an event at once picturesque and traditional. N. Y. Herald Tribune.