The Inaugural Month

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October, the month of rosy tints. It was the rosiest the world of education has seen these many years. With more students than were ever before matriculated, and with the halls of learning larger and stronger and better than ever, throughout the country everywhere the friends of education saw the rose tint of a great educational growth. But why not call October the inaugural month? During its brief passing there occurred the inauguration of many school heads, the inauguration of new classes, the inauguration of new courses, the inauguration of the football season, and the inauguration of class "rushes." October was a good, big, fine month. May there never be an October a whit less.

The class "rushes" rushed with all the strength of yore. But the practice of "hazing" is growing weak, and all good citizens are glad. It is hearing the voice of disapproval, and the day is not far off when to "haze" will be regarded, even by students themselves, as a crime.

Many of the student councils have so decreed and have warned the undergraduates against the practice.

There is a difference between fun and brutality. Students are not a privileged class they are citizens in the making-and when they stoop to rowdyism they may expect to be regarded as rowdies. Those who do not go to college judge the higher institutions of learning by the conduct and efficiency of those who do go. If the student display is bad the public regards the institution from whence he comes as bad. High school boys and girls are excused on the ground that "boys will be boys" and that "girls will be girls." But when these boys and girls reach the halls. higher up they no longer are boys and girls-they are men and women. there they forget to lay aside their youthful pranks, and if the officers in charge. forget to remind them that in the college and the university rowdyism has no place, if, in short, the institutions which should develop the best citizenship, for any cause within itself, allows that citizenship to pass out into the world.

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undeveloped, then there should be no surprise at the criticism directed by a waiting public.

That new courses are constantly being inaugurated, and that these courses are more and more including the vitally practical as well as the vitally theoretical, serves to make good the claim that the higher institutions are becoming, slowly perhaps, but nevertheless surely, half the soul of the nation.

Opinion as to the good and evil of football is pretty well divided, and to repeat the pros and cons of the subject would be but to repeat much of the argument advanced during the years that are gone. Although football is not given a place in the announced curriculum, it has come to be as much a part of our school life as are the prescribed courses of study. It is enough to say that the present will be one of the most active football seasons in the history of the American college.

A number of formal inaugurations of presidents of colleges and universities occurred during October, all of which were largely attended by representatives of other colleges and universities, each installation bringing together a notable body of American educators, as well as, in some instances, a number of men high in the educational circles of Europe.

Of international moment were the inaugurations of Dr. Abbott Lawrence

mouth College.

Lowell as president Presidents Lowell of Harvard and Dr. and Nichols Ernest Fox Nichols Inaugurated as president of DartThe former was inducted into office October 6, and the latter on October 14. The exercises were of a most impressive character, and such as have been seen by few of the present generation even in New England where the pageantry of educational activity is not so uncommon as in other parts of the country.

Would you like a picture of the Harvard exercises? The procession which The procession which moved across the campus to the openair place of inaugural held within its ranks representatives of the largest uni

versities of America and of many nations, the governor and state officials of Massachusetts, representatives of the army and navy, many distinguished men from various walks of life, and the officers and professors of Harvard, with Ex-president Eliot at the head and President-elect Lowell at the foot of the long-winding column. The Harvard colors were everywhere, and great crowds of students, alumni, friends and citizens filled every foot of space round about the campus.

The inaugural ceremonies were opened with the singing of "Laudate Dominum" by the alumni chorus, after which there was a prayer. Then Dr. Lowell was escorted to the president's chair and officially notified that he had been duly elected president of Harvard College. The badges of authority-the college charter, seal and keys-were placed in his hands, he accepted the responsibilities, and resumed his seat. Then Gounod's "Domine Salvum Fac Praesidem Nostrum" was sung, and a few minutes later President Lowell began his inaugural address. At its conclusion there was another choral number, Schubert's "Great Is Jehovah," after which President Lowell conferred the honorary degrees, and then the ceremonies were brought to a close with the benediction.

There were banquets, luncheons, concerts, student celebrations, receptions and all the customary events of such occasions.

Harvard is America's oldest college, and President Lowell is the twentythird occupant of his present position. He is a Harvard man and for nearly two hundred years his ancestors have graduated from this school.

Dartmouth College has been called "Doctor Tucker's Dartmouth." And within the quotation there is much meaning. When Dr. Tucker assumed the presidency of Dartmouth sixteen years ago it was a small New England college. Today, with the transfer of management to Dr. Nichols, the college is a great one. Few institutions have taken on so much of the personality and so many ideals of its leader as has Dart

mouth. President Nichols is a western man whose career as an educator is identified with the East. For several years he was a teacher at Dartmouth, and so is not a stranger to the college nor to the ideals of his beloved predecessor. The new president is the tenth to occupy that position at Dartmouth since it was granted a charter by King George III back in 1769.

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President Lowell devoted almost the whole of his inaugural address to the present condition of Inaugural Address the college and its President Lowell future, laying special emphasis on the more effective oversight of the freshmen. That the freshmen and their control and welfare are foremost in his mind we have but to remember that he has on numerour recent occasions discussed at some length the problems surrounding the students just entering into the life of the college.

The saying of Aristotle that man is a social animal suggests to the new president that American colleges exist primarily to develop youth as social beings. Recalling how the old-time colleges accomplished this, he notes some of the influences of the present day, especially in the larger universities which tend to break up the old college solidarity. It is in discussing measures for arresting these tendencies that President Lowell logically reaches his freshmen freshmen pro

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Boys often go to college from a large preparatory school where they have made a little group of friends. Unless endowed with an uncommon temperament, President Lowell says, such boys are liable to remain in a clique of associates with antecedents and characteristics like their own; while other boys, who have come almost by themselves to college, if shy and unknown, may fail to make friends at all. In either case the boy misses the broadening influence of contact with a great variety of young men, and the college itself thereby falls short of its national mission of throwing together youths of promise of every kind

from every part of the country. If a large college fails to give its students a wide horizon, so that their friendships are based on natural affinities rather than similarity of origin, the purpose of its existence is in part defeated. Since friendships are formed most rapidly at the threshold of college life, the new president believes it clearly desirable that freshmen should be brought together as a class much more than they are now. Specifically President Lowell proposes to bring the freshmen together in a group of dormitories and dining-halls under the comradeship of older men who appreciate the possibilities of college life. Already an arrangement has been made, in this direction at Harvard, by which selected seniors are acting as freshmen advisers. The instructors who for some years have been performing this duty, find the number of inquiries so great that they are obliged to limit each freshman's call to approximately seven minutes. The senior adviser will now help in the preliminary discussion of the freshman's problems, referring to the advising instructor only those which require a more authoritative judgment. This change, in its way, is an adaptation to American conditions of the wholesome influence that the elder and established boys in the English "public schools" have long exercised upon the newcomers.

This detail is merely illustrative of Mr. Lowell's policies. He says that of late years the diligence of the freshmen has also been stimulated by more frequent examinations, but this alone, he believes, is not enough. The change from the life of the preparatory school to that of the college is still too abrupt, and the liberty which the university offers in many instances proves demoralizing. The freshmen quadrangle, with the supervision which it would represent, Mr. Lowell thinks, should enable Harvard to recruit its students younger. The present entrance age, he believes, is due less to the difficulty of preparing for the examination than to parental apprehensions as to the nature of the life which the freshmen lead.

It is also evident from President