FORMING FRIENDSHIPS
A golden piece of advice for those entering college, though one not easy to follow, is: “Be slow in forming your friendships.” The friendships you make with the members of your own sex influence decidedly your friendships with the other and both should be entered into with deliberation. Better be somewhat lonely in the beginning of college life than precipitate relations with those whom you may later come to distrust. Let a young woman wait, take time to survey the situation coolly and dispassionately, before she decides which one, if any, of the Greek societies which solicit her attention she will enter. Do not let her be carried away by the “rushing,” the spreads, the flatteries, the flowers that may be used to influence her decision. She will be all the more valued by the sorority that gets her if she holds off a little until her own mind and judgment have rendered an answer to invitation. And, in the same relative situation, the same word of warning applies to young men. It is in place here to say in regard to the Greek societies that the pleasure and profit derived by the members from such membership should not lead them to a selfish disregard of those outside. The tendency to work only for one’s fraternity or sorority and to find fellowship or friendship nowhere else is recognized as a narrowing influence in these organizations.
COLLEGE PRECEDENTS
Each college, coeducational or otherwise, has its local etiquette that has risen out of its history. Certain things can be done by seniors, for instance, that would not be tolerated in freshmen; certain other things that have no reference to the general rules of society are barred because of a collegiate caprice that has been transformed into law. With this unwritten but binding etiquette the student soon becomes acquainted. If he runs counter to it, he is brought up sharply and made to realize the penalty. The etiquette of common sense, which should guide the relations between young men and women, is of another sort and, owing to the exigencies of the case, must largely be expressed by negative admonitions. The first of these is, do not feel that absence from home gives you privileges to do what you would not do at home. The word “lark” is an enticing one, but young men and young women do not indulge in “larks” together without paying up. Anything that involves secrecy in the good times of young men and young women away at school should be avoided.
AVOID FAMILIARITY
The frequency with which young people of two sexes meet one another in coeducational schools leads them easily into the habit of calling each other by their first names, and into the worse one of adopting nicknames. The advice of Punch is in place. Don’t. Friendship does not mean familiarity. Indeed familiarity is its greatest foe. When a young girl allows a young man to call her by her first name, unless engaged to him, she cheapens his regard for her by just so much.
It often happens that the dormitories or boarding-houses where students live do not afford attractive reception rooms. A young woman shrinks from receiving calls from her young men acquaintances in ugly surroundings and in a room filled perhaps with uncongenial girls or those indifferent to her. It is not improper, under these circumstances, that she should see her men friends elsewhere,—at the college library, at the house of some married friend or in the course of a walk planned beforehand. But it is in wretched taste for her to loiter on the streets with a young man, to stop on corners for talk, to walk back and forth repeatedly from college to boarding-place in his company. Again good sense says, “Don’t.”