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THE M AROON TIG E R
c With the Editor
SHIP AHOY!
E ARE ONCE MORE embarking on another of our
great adventures. Much lies before us. How
important it is that we realize the enormity
of our undertaking. Have we got a good per
spective of it? Is our vessel in lip-top condition from
the stem and bow to the rudder?
If we have in mind what we are going about we are
thinking of the mainland to be claimed, that is, unprec
edented scholastic triumphs. But, besides the mainland
there are numerous other outlying territories destined
to fly our standard. The latter usually entail more
difficulties—more down-right self-denial. The payment
of our pledges on the Endowment is the most desired
of these outlying stretches. A channel most inexorable
in its treacherous claims against the bravest Viking must
be crossed. This characterization of what is up against
us is not overdrawn here. But why muse over a hard
job? After all we are, like Ulysses, “—strong in will,
to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
The new students are welcomed to this community
with cheerful and hear'ty good-will. They couldn’t
have been here this long without having taken on some
of the Spirit that is, after all, typically Morehouse.
All schools boast of their spirit. But to those of us who
are in a position to speak, it is a generally conceded
fact that the Morehouse Spirit is unusual. We need
more blue-bloods for this great and adventurous expe
dition. Their help is asked in striking the sounding
furrows that our posterity may enjoy the same things
that we enjoy here now. But we are exploring! Then
our sons’ sons will have a greater school than More
house College of 1929.
Get the ship well rigged up for a rugged coast. Vic
tory, much desired, is in the distance. More land has
been sighted. One hundred per cent concentration on
triumph in all athletic encounters, debates, orchestra
and glee club engagements and Y. M. C. A. programs for
the term is the plea. For “—our purpose holds to
sail beyond the sunset.”
MILLSTONES
The average college youth sooner or later ques
tions himself as to the best possible way in which he
can fit himself for his chosen field. Morehouse men are
no exceptions. The term “average Morehouse student”
is used here advisedly. This average student is serious
ly interested in fitting himself for his life’s work. But
in doing this he finds himself hampered in two different
ways.
In the first place, unless he is equipped with a strong
will, he is likely to be led off his course unconsciously
by a disaffected attitude of a less conscientious majority.
For instance, to be voraciously inquisitive is becoming
less and less a la mode in American Schools. More
house is very much in America. What folly! A man
trying to know all about what he intends to do after
he leaves college and yet ashamed to let the fellows
see him studying “too much.” Nobody loves a book
worm who is one merely for books’ sake. But, if the
majority were greedy for actual knowledge in their re
spective fields, it’s a wager that if Morehouse won’t
be known in the four corners of Mother Earth within
a generation, the Tigers aren’t the next football cham
pions of the C. A. C.
The average student is further beset by the very forces
which, to all intents and purposes, are guiding him
along the narrow road to usefulness. These forces are,
of course, among the faculty and different campus offi
cials. The above mentioned condition obtains here
probably in a smaller degree than on any other camp
us. Nevertheless, it is here. Although one is impressed
with the democracy that exudes from the very buildings
there is, nonetheless, a trace of disregard for the stu
dent’s individuality on the parts of some of these sup
posedly guiding forces. If a little screw is adjusted
the whole machine may be saved. Mention of this
trace may lead to its wiping out entirely, and More-
housed traditional repulsion for intellectual stagnation
and crushed initiative will be thus preserved.
WHAT!—NO CO-EDS?
The attitude of Morehouse men towards the appear
ance of Spelman girls in classes on the campus is fa
vorable generally. However, whether they would appro
bate a co-educational Morehouse is a matter of specula
tion. Since there has been nothing to indicate that such
is likely, mention of it may seem assinine. But what
harm can come from a little conjecturing?
Some time ago Knute Rockne attributed the success
of Notre Dame’s football team to the absence of women
from the campus. I bis brought about much specula
tion in the college world, and elsewhere.
The Chicago Tribune comments:
“Our own impression is that co-education is a very
mixed blessing. As someone once put it, ‘It's swell for
the girls and hell for the boys.’
“The average girl matures two or three years earlier
than the average boy. By the time she gets to college
she is an adult physically, mentally, and socially. Her
chief concern is in finding a husband (!), and a co
educational college offers her four years of daily con
tact with a select type of male. It is a made-to-order
bargain counter in husbands, and the number of col
lege romances attest to the fact that the co-ed is aware
of her opportunity and takes full advantage of it.
“The average boy, on the other hand, reaches col
lege still in the horse-play stage of adolescence. He
still needs to ease his growing pains with rough sports,
and his interests are still the learning, and making and
collecting interests of the boy. The girl is a woman
when she reaches college; the boy is not a man until
he leaves college. The contacts of co-education, which
are natural to the girl, are unnatural to the boy. He
is distracted. The girl is being fitted for life: the boy
is wasting the time he chould be using in becoming
fitted for life.
“So we suggest co-education—if any—for women.
For men, four years among men. Which presents rath
er a problem in arithmetic, if you care to take it as
seriously as that.”