L'ENFANT TERRIBLE

The flood of senior contests from Dartmouth, from Yale, from Princeton, which indicate the favorite drink, most popular movie actress and best-looking men is the respective classes, occupy enough space in the newspapers to show clearly enough what is expected from the colleges. The latest riot at Yale, when fifty policemen charged a dormitory on account of a single bag of water-such as are familiar between Russell and Randolph--is given seven inches in even the "Transcript" and two-inch headlines in the "Globe".

The siege of the McAlpin by Columbia sophomores, the annual mud-rush at Podunk, and the arrest of a college student for parking too near a fire plug stimulate more frenzied press comment and red-typed leads than the forming of the League of Nations Collegiate Council, the publication of the "Gadfly" and an address by President Eliot together. Naturally, the papers print what their readers want, and the public's interest in college activities is still confined to the lurid incidents which popularly constitute "college life".

How their can the student be specifically accused of lacking interest in public affairs? If he does what is expected of him, he will have no time for politics or news, between one sensational enterprise and the next. If he seriously settles down to decide the fate of nations or debate the tariff question no one ever hears of it. And as for reading the newspapers--if he does he merely learns of his own idiosyncrasies, and if he doesn't, he misses very little. Possibly three or four newspapers repay him for his efforts to find the news with some adequate content. In the rest, he delves between Raymond's advertisements--quite the most amusing feature usually and Zonite, to discover at last that the Yale sophomores have presented the freshman with an ancient and, doubtless, honorable fence.