TIGER LILIES

Every institution of higher education must have a Problem; if none is apparent one must be invented. Dartmouth's problem--so says the New Student, a symposium of college opinions, concerns aesthetics. Mr. Percy Marks, who is still striving to live down "The Plastic Age", has broadcast his opinion to the effect that Dartmouth students have thrown off the shackles of the "sweatshirt period" only to sink into the toils of dilettantism. A Dartmouth undergraduate ably reputed Mr. Marks' aspersions and emphatically denied that students "walk about Hanover with tiger ljlies beween their teeth and green carnations pinned to their jackets. Once more the voluble Mr. Marks offers himself as a target for criticism.

It is difficult to see just exactly why Mr. Marks selected Dartmouth as a hotbed of mauve decadents. Of other colleges such an accusation might have its foundation but Dartmouth men pride themselves on their north woods virility. The mere geographical fact that the college is in the cast does not deprive it of western ruggedness and an open spaces diamond-in-the-rough charm. The profession of literature must have dulled Mr. Marks discernment. Or perhaps fame has rendered him insensible to the gradations and intricacies of college life. Surely "The Plastic Age" was never like this.