It may be due to this indirect mode of controlling student life that the natural antagonism between student and professor has entirely disappeared from Cornell. Certain it is that it has disappeared. Meeting as equals in society, the friendly relations there formed are carried into the class-room. The professor shows no petty peevishness at the indiscretions of those under him, the student no rudeness towards the professor. Nevertheless, probably because of the independence of thought here, no professor's opinions are received as infallible. Truth and proof of truth is the quest of the Cornell student; and that professor whose mind is the most logical and whose statements are the most clearly and conclusively proved is sure to be the most popular, in spite of the fact that his examinations are commonly the hardest.
Looking upon his professor as a fellow-mortal, the student criticises those defects which he may fancy he sees in his character as fully as he would criticise the same defects in a fellow-student. Not only is this seen in the conversation of the students, but especially in The Cornellian, a yearly magazine published by the Junior class of the university. In this, written or pictorial caricatures hold up to ridicule fancied defects in the characters of professors of all grades. Occasionally some newly-attacked professor may feel disposed to punish those who have made so free with his majesty; but anything so hostile to the spirit of Cornell as an abridgment of the freedom of speech could not be successful.
Aside from this annual, the college press consists of—two monthlies, one devoted to and published by the C.U.C.A., the other devoted to the interests of the "Sibley College of Mechanical Engineering" and edited and published by men chosen from that department of the university; a weekly, published by the two upper classes, devoted to general college news and to essays, stories, poems, etc., contributed by students or professors; and, lastly, a daily, published and edited by men chosen from each class in the university. This paper gives the general news of our own and other colleges, furnishes an opportunity for student or professor to express publicly his views with regard to any subject connected with student life, and offers a convenient means of giving notices of any kind to the student body.
In the above we have followed through the influences which affect the social life of the Cornell student, and have seen the general lines along which that life moves. Let us now look at the daily life that is the outcome of these influences. At the two extremes of student life are the bookworms and the ultra fashionables. Of these two classes at Cornell nothing need be said. The members of both might be counted upon your fingers. Between them lie the great mass of students.
