The student’s next most vivid concern is the organization of the social life in the academic commonwealth of which he is a citizen. Every American college has, or fancies it has, its own tone, its ideal type of man; and good citizenship prescribes conformity to the spirit of the place and observance of the letter of its unwritten code. For the type is defined by a body of obligations and taboos transmitted from generation to generation, sometimes through the mouthpiece of the faculty, sometimes by way of the college “Bible” (to use the slang name for those handy manuals of what to do and what to avoid which the college Y.M.C.A. issues for the guidance of newcomers), but most often by a rough process of trial and error which very speedily convinces the freshman that the Fence is for seniors only, or that it is impracticable to smoke his pipe in the Yard, or that it is much healthier to take the air in a class cap than bareheaded. The cherished “traditions” of a college are for the most part a composite of just such privileges and prohibitions as these, clustering round the notion of the type and symbolizing it; and, curiously, the younger the institution, the more insistent it is likely to be about the sanctity of its traditions--a college feels the need of a type in much the same degree that a factory needs a trademark. Conformity thus becomes an article in loyalty. Sometimes the mere conformity is the desiderate virtue, as used (at least) to be the case in Yale. Sometimes the type will go in for individualism, as at Harvard a decade ago, where the thing to conform to was non-conformity. One tradition is probably universal: is there anywhere in America a college which does not boast that it is more “democratic” than others? Democracy undergoes some engaging redefinition in support of these conflicting claims, but at bottom it refers to an absence of snobs, arrogant critics, incomprehensible intellectuals, bouncing wits, uncomfortable pessimists--in short, the discouragement of just such individual tastes and energies as the Martian found discouraged in our social life at large. The money line remains. Theoretically, the poor may compete in athletics and in other student enterprises and reap the same social rewards as the rich: practically, they may compete and go socially unrewarded, precisely as in the outside world. It is natural and seemly that this should be the case, for the poor cannot afford the avenues of association which are the breath of society to the rich. There have been football heroes whom the well-to-do have put in the way of acquiring wealth after they left college, but this is patronage, not democracy. There are also colleges proud to be known as poor men’s colleges, and for that very reason devoid of the democracy they boast. Not long ago the president of Valparaiso had to resign, and it developed that among the counts against him were the deadly facts that he had attended the annual alumni dinner in dress clothes and