Rah! Rah!--Voluntarily
1 There appeared in last Friday’s Emerald a statement attri
buted to the people’s choice, Student Body President Art John
son, to the effect that as soon as a new shipment of rooters lids
becomes available all students will be required to wear them to
football games.
Wearing of rooters lids is an ancient Oregon tradition,
along with class pants. During the bleak wartime period, when
women ruled the campus, and in the reconstruction period
when crochety old veterans composed the male population of
the student body, the system of traditions broke down, and
they largely were discarded. Returning vets, exposed to the
adult world, refused to cooperate with student officers, and
since compliance was largely on a voluntary basis, the latter
were powerless to enforce the old traditions, the epitome of
the college rah rah spirit.
Campus powers feel that now is the time to reinstitute tra
ditions. The freshmen will accept them, having been prepared
in high school for such things, and the observance of these will
become fixed, bringing back what many consider a colorful,
important part of college life.
Enforcement of traditions is difficult, however. Discipline
through the houses is not usually hard. But only one-fourth of
the students belong to sororities and fraternities. And many of
the rest are very, very independent.
Traditions accepted voluntarily are at times very colorful,
add a zest to campus functions, and give their observers a sense
of participation.
Traditions which are imposed upon students by force or
threats of force are odious. It is to be hoped that the campus
executives will not attempt to make the traditions compulsory,
thereby killing them at once, but will place them on a volun
fani Vtaci’c _T7 T
College Discipline With a Light Touch
Usually when a Dean’s list appears it is stu
dents who made “honor-roll” grades. But in this
week’s issue of Collier’s three appears a list of a
different type. Author Holmes Alexander turns
the tables, and lists the Dean’s troubles.
At the top of the list are not the students, but
parents and professors. With the parent it’s the
old story about bad home life and when the off
spring get to college it’s either too late or a
difficult job of adjustment.
“Francis R. B. Godolphin, dean of the college
at Princeton University,” the article explained,
“is of the belief that people remain home pro
ducts, regardless of age, until they reach ma
turity. Some never reach maturity.”
Teacher-pupil relationship is one of the
thorns of college life, say most of the Deans.
Except for favorite students, the teacher-pupil
relationship is usually impersonal in the class
room and sterile outside.
“For the very simple reason that they are
bored, discouraged or neglected by their teach
ers,” the article continues, “students get drunk,
make illicit love, stage public roughhouse, and
dash about the countryside in stolen or forbid
den automobiles.”
Personnel experts assigned to teach the pro
fessors human relations are suggested by the
author. Four Universities have met the prob
lem by conducting courses to teach professors
how to help their students.
A college diploma is getting to be “a white
collar union card’’, it is the opinion of Dean
Godolphin. Deans agree that the cultural value
of college is being sacrificed for tbe utilitarian
value. A college education, they say, is some
thing to get and get fast.
These are the major troubles confronting
Deans. Others, but placed farther down on the
list by the deans themselves, are cheating,
crime, innocent-looking fads that sometimes
build up to major crises, and radicalism.
Author Holmes found most deans to be toler
ant, youthful-minded men and women, who
would much rather look the other way than
catch a malefactor and punish him. The whole
theory of discipline these days is based on the
light touch, and the deans are chosen for this
talent.
This Oct. 1 issue of Colliers is of particular in
terest to college students in another instance,
also. The Editors come out in favor of giving
veterans’ wives an honorary “PH.T” degree.
The degree, which stands for putting husbands
through, was proposed by President Jesse
Buchanan of the University of Idaho, to be con
ferred upon those G.I. Brides who, as Colliers
states it, “shared a life which definitely wasn’t
the life of Riley while their husbands got their
academic degrees.”
Reserve Dunking for Doughnuts
...An Editorial
It seems a truism that partaking of bucolic
pleasures leads to no health and no happiness.
Everyone knows what happened when Eve
strolled in the Garden and picked up the forbid
den fruit.
And some people will still remember that last
year one of the infirmary doctors took time out
from anointing- students with poison oak lotions
to warn erstwhile lovers to stay out of the
Graveyard. Poison oak was getting the upper
hand.
This year’s dangerous pastoral pleasure,
though it may not bear the consequenses of
Eve’s excursion, is far from being a matter for
the campus joke roster.
You’ve guessed by now that we’re leading up
to the perils of a dunking in the polluted Mill
race. The Millrace water flows in from a point
just clown the river from Springfield. Spring
field dumps its sewage into the river; that’s go
ing to continue until that city gets its modern
sewage disposal plant.
This means that the sluggish old Millrace is
on the same par, as far as sanitation goes, with
the secver pipe that runs under your house.
Such a fate as being thrown into, the Millrace,
then, should be reserved only for such cads as
reactionaries and TNE members—but not for
fraternity brothers.
The disciplinary council promises the usual
dire punishments of suspension etc. to persons
who use the Millrace as a tool for their practical
jokes—but common sense should keep students
from indulging in the dangerous practice of
Millrace dunking.—B.H.
Free Lancin ...
There Was a Traveling Salesman...
... by Bill Lance
“Lips that touch wine shall never touch
mine,” declared the fair co-ed. And after she
graduated she taught school for years and years
and years.
Nearly every instructor I have encountered
since I started school has walked across the
front of the room three or four times, paused,
then stated it was silly to have grades, exams,
and other parahhenalia now common to most
educational institutions.
They all seem convinced that grades are a
bunch of hooey and shouldn’t be considered the
most important measure of student work. But,
as Mark Twain was reputed to have said,
“Everybody talks about the weather but no one
does anything about it.”
Larry Meiser, sophomore in liberal arts,
walked up to me the other day with some illumi
nating pointers on this column. Meiser is an as
piring young gentleman with an eye to the fu
ture. His advice was that this column lacked
something. “Whenever I read it,” he said, “I
feel as if 1 am reading nothing.”
When I asked him whv he wasted his time on
it, he replied, “Well I really don't know, unless
I’m just searching for something that isn’t
there.”
Why is it that when girls go on the stage they
usually have to change their names—and their
clothes ?
Barbara Byrne, cute little Delta Zeta pledge,
■was so exhausted after her first trip up the hill
that she passed out. They brought her too. She
fainted again. They brought her two more.
At last this author has written something that
will be accepted by nearly every magazine in
the world—a check for a year’s subscription.
(Swiped from the Army Times, pag'e 15, col. 1.)
'Tis certainly a wonderful group of new fresh
men that have invaded the campus this year.
Take the girls for instance. Not saying that the
ones who previously graced the campii aren’t
fine, but it does seem that this year’s crop is ex
ceedingly pert.
Along with these new co-ed’s other qualities,
they seem to display a wonderful lot of school
spirit. Over one hundred girls tried out for the
six positions on the rally squad.
Combine Jim Crismon’s "test” yells and the
girls own natural abilities and, believe me, the
result was a spectacle rare to behold.
AYhats that old saying? “She is the kind of
girl that makes any lipstick taste good?”
Courtesy of Alpha Phi Carol Udv we have
the story about the little bird that was so pleas
ed because he had just put down a deposit upon
i new car.
All Quiet In Zeta Hall
We hear that a handful of the scholastic waifs who hang
out nights—all night—in the law school stacks and spend mo
ments out of class lined on the steps near Fenton Hall like
birds on a telephone wire, have been gathered together in one
building.
A group of law students, 33 of them, are now living in Zeta
hall, one of the units in John Straub.
That s a good idea. Even though the curriculum of law
school allows a few spare moments for matching pennies and
tossing lighted matches down the Fenton steps, it leaves little
time for the participation in house activities and the horseplay
that’s a part of every other living organization.
Besides, the brotherhood of a common scholastic pursuit
should make for a more tightly knit and agreeable association
than the bond of near-equal bank balances and near-equal
liquor capacities.
The Emerald wishes good luck and high GPA’s to the po
tential lawyers who have taken over Zeta Hall.—B.H.
Professors and Style
Radical changes in student wearing apparel were recom
mended by at least two University of Oregon professors Wed
nesday. We kinda’ like the suggestions.
One idea stemmed from marketing trends. Professor Alfred
L. Lomax, in discussing the idiosyncracies of the market, re
ferred to the peasant kerchiefs so popularly adopted by coeds.
“Why don’t you go out in the fields and pull a plow,” he quer
ied.
With cloudy skies and scattered showers, the unsightly
bandana has reappeared. We’ve always been of the opinion
that this garb suggests a picture of women in the fields with a
caption “It’s the women of Russia that have made the country
great.”
, Pr°fess°r Warren C. Price’s dissertation was in a different
vein. When calling roll in his Law of the Press class, the most
related course in the journalism school to the law school, he
found nothing distinctive about his new students.
Pi ice recommended flowing ties and other unusual items.
We re waiting for unique substitutions and trends. Per
haps we’re in for a style preview that will be copied by Vogue.
—H.S.
Emerald
Tha Oregon Daily Emerald published daily during the college year except Sundays
Mondays, holidays and final examination periods bv the \ssoriater1 QtnHpntc tt • ^ r
Oregon Subscription rates: $3.00 a term.P$4X0 for two ttms^Td’$! Do'a^yea^TnTered as
second class matter at the postoffice Eugene, Oregon. * year* 111116160 as
Don A. Smith, Editor t_axt a,tw„ Z . ~ *
rirwv futremr • J1MNaugh, Business Manager
nnvF.TD Ridd.d Ulknn Cillespte, Managing Editor y
Don Fair, Barbara Heywood Helen Sherman, Fred Taylor, Associate Editors
T m ... t-0RK Mobley, Advertising Manager
I.arili N Thompson, Aahonol Advertising Manager Jean Lovell, Circulation Manager
News Editors: Anne Goodman, Ken Metzler.
Assistant Manager Editors: Hal Coleman,
Vic Fryer, Tom King, Diane Mecham, Stan
Turnbull.
Sports Editor: Dave Taylor.
\\ omen’s Editor: Connie Jackson.
Desk Editors: Marjory Bush, Bob Funk,
Gretchan Grondahl, Lorna Larson, Larry
Meiser.
Chief Night Editor: Lorna Larson.