I turn to the front cover of this satisfied publication; it portrays a table in a lobster palace, with a semi-nude girl-student at a supper-party with a man-student. There is a quart bottle of liquor on the table, and another in a bucket of ice beside the table, and the man-student has fallen asleep, dead drunk. Such is student life according to the “Wisconsin Octopus” for May, 1922. And in case this issue be not representative, I take up that of January, 1922. This also portrays on the cover a semi-nude girl-student at a “prom” with a young man-student, who can scarcely be distinguished from the one in the “Arrow” collar advertisement on the back cover. The frontispiece of the issue consists of a drawing entitled: “The Clock Watcher,” and we discover that a “clock watcher” is a man-student observing the ankles of a girl-student. On the next page we find a poem, which speaks for itself: Absinth makes the heart grow fonder, Make the lights go blinking yonder, Makes one lamp-post seem like ten, Absent absinth, come again. On the next page we find a cartoon, portraying a semi-nude girl-student, sunk in a lounging chair, smoking a cigarette; we are told: A good woman’s a good woman, But a smoke’s a smoke. On the next page we find some sketches, seeming to indicate that the “prom” is a kind of college kissing game, and that at the end of this game the girl lies in a drunken swoon. Later on we find three drawings, “The Famous Prom Soak,” which tell us in three funny ways that the “prom” is a place where both boys and girls get drunk and have a headache the next morning. A little farther on occurs an illustration of a boy and girl who are conversing: “I know something that beats the Prom.” “What?” “Buy a car, and park some place.” A little later we learn: “If it’s stag, it’s a souse-party.” A little later we see a girl walking on an electric-light wire, and it is explained to us, “A modern girl can’t be shocked.” I think I have quoted enough. I leave it to the impartial reader to decide the question—whose heads are empty at the University of Wisconsin? Is it the little group of devoted idealists of the Social Science Club, who in the face of ridicule and scolding have brought a series of writers and public men, both radical and conservative, to discuss modern problems before the student body? Or is it the little set of snobbish fraternity men, who run the social and political life of the university, and edit its publications for the advertising of their own sensuality and cynicism? CHAPTER L EDUCATION F. O. B. CHICAGO