Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/202

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and of permanently acquiring a sort of social delirium tremens. Local women, at mothers' meetings and at afternoon sewing circles or bridge whist parties, look very serious and shake their heads knowingly when they talk of the awful social goings on over at the college.

"Believe me," some maiden of uncertain years affirms, "I wouldn't let a daughter of mine do as those girls do. It's scandalous, and would ruin any constitution."

Now the real fact is that the average young woman whom I know in college, and my acquaintance is not limited, has very little social life, and the average man, and I know thousands of them, has still less. Rather than there being too much social life, as many allege, I am convinced that there is too little. The trouble lies in the fact that what there is, is too restricted in character and is entered into by too few people. A study of the dances given at the institution with which I am connected will show two things: granted that the number given is large yet it is true that never more than ten per cent. of the whole student body is dancing at any week-end and often not one half this number, and it is true also that twenty-five per cent. of the student body does at least ninety per cent. of the dancing. The social work is unevenly distributed.

I have spoken of dancing as if it were the main social activity in which college students indulge. In an inland college town in the Middle West this is not far from the fact, though there are athletic games which bind more strongly than any other activity the undergraduate body into a more unified group;