Only a few weeks ago I was discussing this same situation with one of our college officers who was deploring the fact that our girls were going out to parties to an extent that was proving ruinous to the health of many of them, and she thought the University should pass some pretty rigid regulations to control this situation.
"How many of our girls," I asked, "do you think make up the list of these social debauchees? How many ought to be locked up or sent home or put into a sanitarium?" She thought for a moment and then replied, "Forty, perhaps," and then thinking again, "twenty would very likely include all of them." And this is less than two per cent. of our girls. I am of the opinion that not more than that proportionate number of our young men are excessively given to dancing and similar forms of social activity. I am sure that seventy-five per cent. of the undergraduates whom I have known have too little social life; instead of the social activities of our college being intemperate, the fact is that they are controlled by a monopoly of a very limited number of people. Five per cent. of our students, to state the case generously, have too much social life, twenty per cent. have about what normal young people require, and the remainder of the undergraduate body have too little, and so get out of college crude and inadequately trained in social matters.
This condition of ill-training is intensified considerably in an institution like the state university, because of the large number of technical students in attendance, many of whom are more interested in acquiring information than in getting a real educa-
