Another Oxford

Whenever U. S. undergraduates are gathered together and the talk runs on higher educational methods, invariably there will come a longing reference to "the Oxford system." What is meant is the admirable tutorial plan, the distinction between "pass" men and "honors" men, the large liberty afforded initiative, and (utterly fascinating to the gathering) the Oxford "atmosphere."

A little weary of the prevalent emphasis on this same "atmosphere" and suspicious that no combination of tutors, honors and liberty could produce the ideal commonly pictured, The Dartmouth (undergraduate daily newspaper named for its college), last week, published supplementary impressions of Oxford by one Franklin McDuffee, who had studied there. He wrote of Oxford's trivial, traditional regulations-- gowns for classes, hours for going home at night, bans on public and private dances and on hotels and restaurants not licensed by the Vice-Chancellor, "gating"* and fining for offenses. He wrote of the pitfall of idling that gapes for "men who lack pronounced will power and pertinacity." He wrote of Oxford's unwholesome, antisocial, velvet-suited, rose-carrying, pseudo-aesthetes, and of the brilliant, insincere, stimulating, dangerous-to-the-guileless-American Oxford conversationalists.

* Gating: "requiring punished students to be within their college gates by a specified early hour of the evening."