COLLEGE ACTIVITIES

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comers. Here a very different and a far more significant side of college life is shown. Representative upperclassmen in various spheres of college activity describe distinctive phases of campus life. The chairman of the Senior Council, or else the president of the senior class, explains the honor system and what it means in campus public opinion; the captain of the football team urges men to take their share of responsibility in their class teams, the editor-in-chief of the Princetonian outlines the method of candidacy for positions on the college publication. The president of the University usually speaks. The occasion is in fact a freshman mass meeting on the importance of using one's talents and of putting one's shoulder to the wheel.

Meanwhile the schedule of lectures and recitations is in full swing. Upperclassmen are taking estimates of their preceptors and are settling down to the term reading and the talk is of preceptorial assignments. The Senior Council, made up of leaders in college activities and representing all interests, scholarly, athletic, musical, dramatic, religious, literary, executive, has assumed its duties. A dozen organizations of serious intent like the Engineering Club, the Municipal Club, the Law Club, the Medical Club, the Chemical Club, the McCosh Club, are taking up their interests. And, besides these more formal groups, a number of smaller and almost unknown but thoroughly live gatherings of kindred spirits begin activity-small reading societies, informal debating clubs, and the like. The bulletin columns of the Daily Princetonian are filled with notices regarding this, that, or the other competitive position on the College publications. Announcement of trials for the University musical and dramatic clubs jostle notices of preceptorials in English poetry, lectures on Old Icelandic, readings in

honors French, and graduate courses in the philosophy of education. Recitations begin at 8.30 A.M., immediately after chapel and occupy the morning until 1.30 P.M. Afternoons are devoted to laboratory work, to reading, and to exercise, and by freshmen to compulsory athletics under the direction of the Department of Physical Education. The various teams and crews are at practice; the tennis courts and golf links are in constant use. It has been estimated that on an average afternoon in the early autumn not less than thirteen hundred undergraduates get some form of congenial exercise. The stretches of level turf between the various buildings are the scene of continuous ball playing-football punting in the fall and winter in an indigenous game that has no name and only one or two rules and which is replaced when the baseball season comes around by knocking out grounders and flies. Interclass athletic championships are being played off, the only occasion in which general public interest is at all keen being the sophomore-freshman baseball contest. This is the closing game in the interclass series and is generally a brief one and conducted amid disconcerting circumstances. The very fact, however, that in the course of the year about one hundred and fifty teams, crews, etc., compete in intramural contests without any gallery to applaud them, marks the development of the new spirit in athletics-that of sport for sport's sake. Onlookers of course still attend football practice, but the majority of undergraduates are participating too actively in some form of athletics themselves to be able to spend much time on the bleachers.

One night early in the autumn the precincts of the two Halls re-echo with unfamiliar noises, and scores of neophytes may be seen being led by devious paths to the

Halls for initiation. Just why initiation into these literary societies should be accompanied by the processes that usually are connected therewith no one knows; but if the tales of college gray-heads may be believed the rites of initiation to-day are not so severe a test of a neophyte's fitness as they used to be. The institution of a course of public speaking and debate in the Halls, conducted by the Department of English, for Hall men and accepted as a part of the regular freshman curriculum, has served to increase the membership which had latterly fallen. The forensic interests of the University are monopolized by the Halls. Besides the customary Hall prizes for oratory, debating, and writing, the leading college prizes such as the Lynde Debate Medals, and the Junior Orator Medals are open to competition only to Hall contestants. Positions on intercollegiate debating teams are open to all undergraduate members of the University, but it is seldom that a non-Hall man is a contestant. In addition to the course in public speaking and debate, the student entering a Hall may follow the regular Hall course beside gaining in the weekly business meetings experience in parliamentary law and the conduct of deliberative bodies. If he fulfills all the requirements, he receives a diploma of graduation. Besides their literary exercises and their business meetings, the Halls afford the use of libraries, reading rooms, and billiard rooms, and in spite of their lessened relative prominence in campus life they have maintained all their old independence and tradition and adapting themselves to the new conditions they offer a better and more unique opportunity than ever to men who are so inclined.

It has been stated that a freshman's initiation into class solidarity takes place at the time of the class election soon after the term begins. The other classes