Allowing for the small differences of tradition and maturity, the situation is the same in the colleges. The ways of an undergraduate community are determined by standards which do not apply to men and women of the same age who must work for their livings. For example, there survives from the Middle Ages an antagonism between gown and town. When this began it involved all the members of the academic community--faculty even more than students. It turned on conflicts over the very structure of the municipal economy in the course of which “gownsmen” established and vindicated their autonomous jurisdiction over the persons, properties, and actions of their “own.” College or university became a city within a city, sovereign over all affairs affecting it, and privileged in the national life. Today, faculty is for practical purposes a part of “town.” “Gown” consists only of the body of undergraduates. These often stand in a predatory relationship to the residual community. They may steal signs, fences, garments, and whatnot; they may destroy dishes, furniture, and other property not their own--academic or lay; they may brawl on the public street and on occasion beat up policemen and citizens without being held responsible as workers of the same age would be. They may endeavor in every way to “beat the game” in relation to their studies--wangle more cuts than they are entitled to, hand in work as their own which is not their own, cheat at examinations, and in every other possible way “put it over” on the faculty. For an undergraduate to be serious about the “serious purpose” of college, to be academically law-abiding, to show an interest in studies, is at best to be slightly declassé, at worst to be a greasy grind. Any manifestation of friendliness to a teacher is “boot-licking.” The total impression which undergraduate conduct makes in the mass is of an underground class war between student and faculty; and the traditional undergraduate code is a warlike code, requiring students under all circumstances whatsoever to stand by each other and against the faculty. Even under an “honor system” a “squealer” is as total a loss among students as among gangsters. In sum, tradition allows the college man certain privileges and protects his abuse of them. Like the infant, he is held not accountable for violations of the adult social code. He is maintained in a state of infantile irresponsibility. This state is even more significant, if not so conspicuous, in the matter of the basic economy of life. For the representative undergraduate does not keep himself. He is kept. He does not earn his food and clothing and shelter and entertainment. Again, like the infant, he is sheer consumer, not producer; Veblen would call him an instrument of “conspicuous consumption” and a foremost avatar of the leisure class.