NEW WINGS FOR PEGASUS

"The Sad Plight of the College Lit" is made the subject of speculation in an article in the current number of "The New Student." In the opinion of the author, who edits the undergraduate literary magazine of the University of Wisconsin, the dilemma at hand is largely, to be attributed to the shifting of interest in extra-curricular activities during the past generation, which has resulted in a decline in calibre of the candidates competing for staff positions on college literary periodicals. The increasing encroachments by campus newspapers and humorous publications on strictly literary fields have also played their part in creating the present situation.

Not too optimistically the writer of the present article approaches the question of what can be done to provide new life for the dying college "lit". His conclusion is that the college Pegasus of the future would do well to concentrate its entire attention upon interpreting the life and spirit of the university.

The small circulation of college literary magazines is sufficient proof that it is to outside periodicals that students turn when inclined to while away time over a short story or a discussion of a cosmopolitan problem. On the other hand it is possible that a large student public could be brought to patronize a magazine which should undertake exclusively to mirror their own life and activities. College newspapers perform this function in an abbreviated form; it would be the task of the proposed college "lit" to select topics of controversial or novel interest and develop them in a literary manner. The difficulty of confining contributors entirely to college subjects would not be the least of the trials of the college literary publication embarking upon this policy. Nevertheless this obstacle ought not to be insurmountable and the experiment would be worth trying.