"THOU SWEARST . . . IN VAIN"

Florida has gained a reputation for fabulosity; it is fair to assume that any state which embraces land booms, swamps, and crocodiles, has well earned such a distinction. There are indeed many unkind enough to include Rollins college in the above category of significant characteristics; this group will point with ill-disguised glee to the latest innovation of that institution. With all the ludicrous pomposity that misguided sincerity can impart, Rollins college has imposed on its personnel, both faculty and undergraduate, an oath that it will "strive for self-knowledge, self-reverence, and self-control." Searching for precedent, classicists discovered that a similar oath was exacted from the Athenian youth upon his entrance to manhood and civic life; the oath proceeds, "truth, courtesy, cheerful cooperation, and loyalty to Rollins."

Were it not for the sincerity rampant in every line of the oath, were it not for the palpable belief that only thus may students be persuaded of the need for serious work in college, the imposition would deserve every guffaw dispatched in its ill-fated direction. Against such sincerity there is small use to argue that undergraduates as well as faculty will recite the affirmation mechanically, with the slightest suggestion of a hypocritical smirk at the faculty of such rigamarole; it would be equally futile to maintain that if a college man is not already mature enough to appreciate his opportunities, no more administration of an oath will boost him suddenly out of his adolescence.

In such a case argumentation is useless; against the hard shell of sincerity it can make no impress; to the skeptic it would be sadly bromidic. It is sufficient to draw the obvious analogy. To the average undergraduate, such a performance as the Rollins oath appears a trifle suggestively reminiscent of those faded, shrunken khaki dungarees once the foil for a pretty gilt badge.