College spirit

“ By college spirit some men mean this and far more: they mean that loyalty to a college which rivets a man to the severest tasks of scholarship, through which he gains intellectual power and enthusiasm, without which no graduate is an entire credit to any college; and finally they mean that vision of an ideal life beyond Commencement which shows a man that only through the rigid subordination of transient and trivial pleasures can he hope to become the only great victory a university ever wins—a trained, devoted, and inspired alumnus, working for the welfare of mankind. ”

“ True college spirit is found in the man whose heart has warmed to the love of his college, whose eyes have caught the vision of the ideals that the college possesses, whose brain has thought over and understood these ideals until they have become very fibre of his being. This man will yell not for the selfish pleasure of wallowing in sentimentality, but for the solid glory of his college ”

“ But even if intercollegiate games are detrimental to the interests of scholarship, is not the college spirit they create worth all they cost? Perhaps so. A university is more than a curriculum and a campus. It is more than the most elaborate student annual can depict. Even in Carlyle's day, it was more than he called it: a true university was never a mere 'collection of books.' It is the spirit that giveth life, and 'college spirit' is certainly a name to conjure with. The first question is what we mean by college spirit. ”

“ A student may throw his hat in the air, grab a megaphone, give 'three long rahs,' go through the gymnastics of a cheer-leader,—putting the most ingenious mechanical toys to shame,—and yet leave some doubt whether he has adequately defined college spirit.
What is this college spirit that hovers over the paid coach and his grandstand—this 'indefinable something,' as one writer calls it, 'which is fanned into a bright flame by intercollegiate athletics'? Shall we judge the spirit by its manifestations in an institution famed above all else for its winning teams and its college spirit? ”

“ It is this spirit that makes and enforces a peculiar sentiment in the college community, which becomes almost as strong as positive law. These influences emanate in various ways. No one can trace them to their ultimate source, but all feel the effect of these dominant forces, and realize that their lives are, in some measure, gradually but surely becoming molded and shaped by them. These influences are among the most cherished recollections in after years, and unite the student to his college with affectionate regard. ”

“ SCHOOL SPIRIT Among the forces which shape young men and women in our educational institutions, none is more potent than that indefinable, intangible, powerful thing we call school spirit, or college spirit, as the case may be. Students are often mistaken in the expression of it, but the spirit is right, though the expression may be wrong. School spirit always represents an unselfish attitude of the student. ”

“ The business man who never enjoyed the advantage of going to college, is puzzled as he witnesses the demonstration of undergraduate life, and he fails to catch the meaning; he does not understand; it has played no part in his own experience; college customs seem absurd to him, and he fails to appreciate that in these traditions our American college spirit finds expression. ”

“ Likewise, becoming a "grind," removing one's self from the human fellowship that college ought to furnish in its most delightful form, and becoming determined to prepare for a successful business career without regard to the warm flow of human emotion through the heart—this is not college spirit. All these harmless things are excluded because they are primarily selfish, and college spirit is primarily opposed to selfishness. ”

“ It all turns on the spirit which inspires the entire collegiate body, on the mental attitude of the university as a whole. This brings us at once to the danger which I think confronts all our large universities to-day, and which I am sure confronts that university which I know and love best. We are given over too much to the critical spirit and we are educating men to become critics of other men instead of doers of deeds themselves. ”

“ He does not comprehend the meaning of them at once, nor does he realize that they are the product of generations of students, but he soon learns that there is something more powerful in college life than the brick and mortar of beautiful buildings, or high passing marks in the classroom. When he comes to know the value and the underlying spirit of the traditions of his college, he treasures them among the enduring memories of his life. ”

“ The undue excitement and spirit of rivalry fostered is foreign to the true idea of an earnest student life. The college is no monastery to make the student a recluse, but it should be a place of solitude, a modern cloister, where the student may be kept in partial isolation and away from the turbulent stream of public life and distracting social influences. The student may keep in the midst of the current of actual modern thought and life without sacrificing the quiet seclusion which is an essential requirement for the best scholarship. ”

“ It is not to be wondered at that class spirit runs high and class sentiment becomes a strong abiding power with the student. It is worth much to any young man or woman to be initiated into this hallowed sanctuary and catch its spirit and receive its uplifting influence. These central forces of the college classes naturally combine into a community with a common life. Thus each college comes to have a genius loci of its own. The subtle and fascinating influence of the common life and spirit is the esprit de corps of a college, and exerts no small influence over the life of the students. ”

“ Not only upon the shields of our American universities do we find “veritas”; in spirit at least it is also clearly written across the face of the entire college life of our times. Gentlemanliness, open-mindedness, originality, honor, patriotism, truth—these are increasingly found in both the serious pursuits and the play life of our American undergraduates. The department in which these ideals are sought is not so important as the certainty that the student is forming such ideals of thoroughness and perfection. ”

“ Neither does the worldly spirit that pervades the gentlemen's college further the university's interest in scholarship, nor do the university's scholarly interests further the college work in gentility. ”

“ Opportunity where he can't give you the straight arm, and if you don't put a knee in his chest and tame him for [Pg 289] life you haven't got the real Siwash spirit, that's all.
Funny thing about college. It isn't merely an education. It's a whole life in itself. You enter it unknown and tiny—just a Freshman with no rights on earth. You work and toil and suffer—and fall in love—and climb and rise to fame. When you are a Senior, if you have good luck, you are one of the biggest things in the whole world—for there isn't any world but the campus at college. ”

“ And above all, he will never forget the gleam of idealism that he received in the old halls, the vision of his chance to serve his fellows. The man who does these things, who thinks these things, has true college spirit. ”

“ These things, however, are all dependent upon the spirit of the actor, upon his vision, his determination, his ambitious and unflagging attempts. The true modern university contributes to the world a great-minded and a great-hearted man, to whom college [200] life has been a soul’s birth as well as a mind’s awakening. ”

“ Is not the spirit of the seeker after truth the same both at home and abroad, and should not his own college receive the benefit of this spirit? Many men are heard year after year at the sessions of these learned societies whose voices have never been heard in their own colleges outside of their own class-rooms. Is not the college the loser, whether the college be interpreted as meaning board of trustees, president, faculty, students or alumni? ”

“ I began my studies with eagerness. Before me I saw a new world opening in beauty and light, and I felt within me the capacity to know all things. In the wonderland of Mind I should be as free as another. Its people, scenery, manners, joys, tragedies should be living, tangible interpreters of the real world. The lecture-halls seemed filled with the spirit of the great and the wise, and I thought the professors were the embodiment of wisdom. If I have since learned differently, I am not going to tell anybody.
But I soon discovered that college was not quite the romantic lyceum I had imagined. ”

“ Fascinating fields of knowledge are waiting to be explored; possibilities of doing, as well as of knowing, are on every side; new and dear friendships enlarge and sweeten dreams of future study and work, and the young student cannot afford quivering nerves or small lungs or an aching head any more than bad taste, rough manners, or a weak will. Handicapped by inheritance or bad training, she finds the plan of college life itself her supporter and friend. ”

“ We have not all of a university when we have men and buildings, money, students, brains. Back of a university there lies its foundation-idea, that of academic control.
What is academic rule? It is rule over the pride of man. A college is a place whose chief power is to inculcate humility by the means of true learning; to establish intellectual honor and integrity by searching out the ways of God in nature, science, and philosophy, and in letters and in art.
It is the primary work of a university to make men humble. The Freshman is not teachable. The Sophomore is an intellectual upstart. ”

“ Their eyes are upon the stadium rather than upon the library; the delights of scholarship influence them less than ambition for leadership and the importance of “making good” in student affairs. They are in college for “popular” reasons, and too often fail to learn how to think. But they are eager, versatile, adaptable, with a ready capacity for social adjustment and modern expression. ”

“ After we have said much concerning the life and the work of the American undergraduate, there is still a valuable thing which the college should impart to him, and through which he should become enabled to present with greater charm and with greater force the message which is in his soul. This valuable thing, at once both idealism and incentive, is the undergraduate’s individual message to the world. It may be composed of knowledge, the ability to think, the faculty of relaxation, and the power to do faithfully and successfully some given task. ”

“ While the academic sideshow of lectures and recitations is getting itself started in halting fashion, the freshman is in the fierce struggle and joy of real college life. As free of conventional wrappings as nature made him, he is paraded and tubbed in open daylight around faculty lawns and by campus houses, and whiles away the forenoon in stunts which teach him his place some more and further his initiation into that innermost, sacredest circle, the knights of the college tradition. Since nothing can be done unless you get student sentiment behind it, the faculty sits in helpless inactivity ”

“ But there need be no surmise about college florescence. Faculties may beam with complacency on their yearly cluster of [121] full-blown graduates, the very walls of the gray old universities may thrill as they echo the applause of admiring audiences, but the greatest pride is not felt within the college town itself where the student life centres. It is back in the roots that have made college life possible. Back in some parental existence that daily sinks itself farther into the commonplace in order that some son or daughter may blossom into the culture of arts and belles-lettres. ”

“ College isn't the Elysium that it is painted in stories and novels, but I feel sorry for any intelligent man who didn't have the opportunity to go to college. There is something beautiful about one's college days, something that one treasures all his life. As we grow older, we forget the hours of storm and stress, the class-room humiliations, the terror of examinations, the awful periods of doubt of God and man—we forget everything but athletic victories, long discussions with friends, campus sings, fraternity life, moonlight on the campus, and everything that is romantic. ”

“ At that the old graduate laughed with much amusement: "So you think I have been worrying about the college, do you? You really think that you, little man, are of sufficient consequence to cause anxiety for the university? Princeton certainly is changed in many ways—many things are much better than when I was in college; we did not have that magnificent library, nor such athletic facilities, nor the honor system, nor many advantages that you have. Yes, many things are much better than when I was in college, but you do not happen to be one of them. ”

“ Merely for good times, for romance, for society, college life offers unequalled opportunities. Of course no idle person can possibly be happy, even for a day, nor she who makes a business of trying to amuse herself. For full happiness, though its springs are within, we want health and friends and work and objects of aspiration. “We live by admiration, hope, and love,” says Wordsworth. The college abounds in all three. In the college time new powers are sprouting, and intelligence, merriment, truthfulness, and generosity are more natural than the opposite qualities often become in later years. ”