An American at Oxford

by John Corbin

The same is true of the great senior society, the Hasty Pudding. Its most prominent members belong to the few small clubs of upper classmen; the rest are as much a social fringe as the later tens of the Institute. And the senior clubs, like the clubs of the under classmen, are more interested in their private politics than in the policy of the college as a whole. At Yale the senior societies still exert a strong and generally wholesome influence, but at Harvard they have long ceased to do so, if they ever did. In proportion as a man is successful in the social world the system lifts him out of the body of undergraduate life. The reward of athletic distinction or of good-fellowship is a sort of pool pocket, upon getting into which a man is definitely out of the game. The leaders in the college life, social and athletic, are chosen on the superficial tests of the freshman year, and are not truly representative; and the organization of which they become a part is calculated only to suppress general and efficient public spirit. The outer layers are dead wood and the kernels sterile. This is at least one reason why Harvard does not oftener win.

In all this there is no place for a philosophy of despair. The spirit of the undergraduate, clubbed and unclubbed, is normal and sound. The efforts which the clubs themselves make from time to time to become representative are admirably public spirited; and there is no less desire on the part of the outsiders to live for the best interests of the college. On the day of an athletic contest the university is behind the team, heart and lungs; and when defeat comes it is felt alike by all conditions of men. From time to time ancient athletes journey to Cambridge to exhort the undergraduate body to pull together; and it is a poor orator indeed who cannot set in motion strong currents of enthusiasm. Half an hour of earnest talk on the strenuous life from Theodore Roosevelt has often been known to raise a passion of aspiration that has positively lasted for weeks. But the social system cannot be galvanized into life and functioning. The undergraduates aspire and strive, but every effort is throttled by a Little Old Man of the Sea. When all is said and done, the mob and the cliques remain mob and cliques; with discord within and exclusive without, there is small hope of organized efficiency.

At Yale the oligarchic spirit of the senior societies is compact and operative where that of the Harvard clubs is not; but Yale also is being swamped. The vast and increasing mob of the unaffiliated has several times within the last decade shown a shocking disrespect for the sacred authority of the captains; and the non-representative character of the sophomore societies, from which the senior societies are recruited, has been a public scandal. One result of this disorder is that the ancient athletic prestige is slipping away, or is so far in abeyance that it is again a question whether Harvard or Yale has—shall we say the worse team? The case of the older universities is typical. Other institutions are expanding as fast or faster, and it is only a question of time when the increase of numbers will swamp the social system.

That there is something rotten in the state of Denmark has of late been officially recognized, at least at Harvard. In order to create a general social and athletic life in the community a Union has been established, modeled on the Oxford Union. It would be pleasant to picture the College House of the future shaking hands with Claverly, the Phi Beta Kappa linking elbows with the Porcellian, and the fellows who now, in spite of a desire to be sociable, have lived through four years of solitary confinement each in his petty circle, enjoying the bosom friendship of all the men they may desire to know. It would be pleasant but perhaps not altogether warrantable, when one considers the essential nature of the Union.

The Oxford Union of celebrity, as has been pointed out in an earlier chapter, is a thing of the past. It was an exclusive institution, in which no attempt was made to foster universal brotherhood. When it was thrown open to the entire undergraduate world, it lost caste and authority. The elect flocked by themselves each in his own exclusive club. If the Harvard Union had been modeled on the old exclusive Oxford Union, it might perhaps have been equally efficient in bringing together a broadly representative body of men. But it was modeled on the modern democratic Union. Here is a plain case: When the Oxford Union ceased to be exclusive, its best elements flocked by themselves, and the result is a growth of small exclusive clubs. At Harvard the exclusive clubs and societies are both ancient and honorable, and, moreover, very comfortable, and it hardly seems likely that their members will rout themselves out of their cosy corners to join the merry rout at the Harvard Union.

This is not to cast a gloomy eye upon the new university club; it is rather by way of emphasizing the importance of the work it has to do, and will succeed in doing. Hitherto the lounging grounds of the unaffiliated (alas! that in such an alma mater so many are forever unaffiliated!) have been public billiard-rooms and tobacco shops. For the solace of a midnight supper one had to go to the locally familiar straw-hatted genius of the sandwich, and for the luxury of a late breakfast to John of the Holly Tree. And John the Orange Man! Great worthies these, ancient and most honorable. But even in the enchantment of retrospect they somehow or other explain why so many fellows choose to live, for the most part, in small cliques in one another's rooms and cultivate the deadly chafing-dish. For the unaffiliated—by far the larger part of each class—the new club-house will be a Godsend. It is much more fun to cut a nine-o'clock lecture if you are sure of a comfortable chair at breakfast and a real napkin; and even in the brutal gladness of youth, it is pleasant at a midnight supper to be seated. And then, after that athletic dinner at Memorial, a place to loaf quietly over a pipe with whatever congenial spirit one finds, and listen to the clicking of billiard-balls! It is also proposed that the 'varsity athletes have their training tables at the new Union, so that any fellow may come to know them clothed and in their right minds. I fancy that the new club will leave those old worthies a trifle lonesome, and will banish the chafing-dish forever.

The spirit of an old graduate somehow takes kindly to the idea of a place like that. How the spirit of Bishop Brooks, for instance, would enjoy slipping in of an evening for the cigar they have denied him in the house erected in his memory! And for the graduate in the flesh the club-house will be no less welcome, especially if he is unlucky enough not to have a club of his own to go back to. To love one's alma mater it is, of course, not necessary to have a club; but it somehow interferes with the sentiment of a home-coming to be obliged to go back to Boston by trolley for luncheon and dinner, and to eat it among aliens. In the new Union it will even be possible to put up for the night. A long step has been made in advance of the old unhappy order. Yet the new Union leaves the vital evil in the community life as far as ever from solution.

What the authorities have failed to do consciously may, according to present indications, be accomplished, in some manner at least, by an unconscious growth. When Memorial became inadequate to the mere demand for seating-room, new dining-halls were established. In the future it is possible that these new halls may be kept within the line where community life becomes impossible and mob life begins. If they could be, the problem would be at least one step nearer solution. But to gain the highest effect of community organization, it is necessary that the men who dine in the same hall shall live near one another. Under the present system this rarely happens, and when it does, it does not even follow that they know one another by sight. Until the halls represent some real division in undergraduate life—separate and organized communities—they must remain the resort of a student mob.

Fortunately, another movement is discernible in the direction of separate residential organization. Already certain of the dormitories in American universities are governed democratically by the inmates: no student is admitted except by order of a committee of the members. The fraternity houses so widely diffused in America offer a still better example, almost a counterpart, of the halls of the golden age of the mediæval university. Any considerable development of hall or fraternity life in the great universities would result in a dual organization of the kind that has proved of such advantage in England, so that a man would have his residence in a small democratic community, and satisfy his more special interests in the exclusive clubs of the university. In such an arrangement the hall would profit by the clubman as the clubman would gain influence through the hall. All undergraduates would thus be united in the general university life in a way which is now undreamed of, and which is unlikely, as I think, even in the new Harvard Union.

The tendency toward division in the dining-halls and the dormitories is evident also in athletics; but here it is very far from unconscious. The division by classes long ago ceased to be an adequate means of developing material for the 'varsity teams, and when the English rowing coach, Mr. R. C. Lehmann, was in charge of the Harvard oarsmen, he outlined a plan for developing separate crews not unlike the college crews of England. This system has since been effected with excellent results. Separate boating clubs have been established, each of which has races among its own crews and races with the crews of its rivals. Only one thing has prevented the complete success of the system. The division into clubs is factitious, representing no real rivalry such as exists among English colleges. To supply this rivalry, it is only necessary that each boat club shall represent a hall. The same division would of course be equally of benefit in all branches of sport. The various teams within the university would then represent a real social rivalry, such as has long ceased to exist. This could scarcely fail to produce the effect that has been so remarkable at the English universities. As in England, a multiplication of contests would on the one hand develop far better university material, and on the other hand it would lessen rather than exaggerate the excessive importance of intercollegiate contests.