Inside school or college the girl is in several ways responsible for the
atmosphere. Merely in her conversation she can be of service or
dis-service. It may be simply a good joke which she is telling, but if
the joke misrepresents the school she will, perhaps, do lasting harm. If
she is hypercritical--and there is nothing so contagious as
criticism--she influences people in the direction of her thought; she
sets a current of criticism in motion. A student frequently gives vent
to an opinion that is only half-baked--it is well, by the way, to make
zwieback of all our opinions before we pass them around as edible--about
courses and instructors. She does not realize that some opinions to be
worth anything must be the result of a long process of baking, that a
nibble from the corner of a four months' or nine months' course will
not, however understandingly it may be Fletcherized, tell you whether
the course is going to be fruit cake, meringue or common soda crackers.
She may think that she herself is so unimportant that what she says
can't matter, or she may not mean what she says and be merely letting
off steam. Nevertheless her influence is exerted. Some one showed an old
lady, who had never been known to say anything in the least critical of
any human being, the picture of a very fat man prominent in public life.
She looked at it a moment, and then said sweetly: "My, isn't he plump!"
If only there were more old and young ladies like that dear soul!
There is another kind of conversation which may not be ill-natured and
yet does harm. Idle gossiping, talking about things that are not worth
while or speculating about affairs which are not our business and of
which we know little or nothing. Akin to this is fashionably slangy
conversation concerning the latest thing in books, magazine articles,
trivial plays. For even the "tone" of school or college conversation a
student is responsible. She can make her school seem cheap or
cultivated. The remarks which visitors overhear as they go from room to
room or from building to building are likely to indicate the "tone" of
an institution. A catalogue may say all it pleases about a school but in
the end the school is judged by the women it educates and sends out,
even as a tree is known by its fruit. Cultivated, strong women are worth
more in advertisement than all the printed material in the world,
however laudatory.
When a girl has received everything her Alma Mater has to give, she has
no right to be untrue to its fundamental aims and ideals, or to
misrepresent it in any way, either by what she says or by her own
behaviour. Every student in a large institution is in a sense a
pensioner. No student can pay for what is given to her. Is it not a poor
return for her to be reflecting dishonour rather than honour upon her
school?
There is a certain social selfishness in the way some students take
their opportunities for granted without realizing that there are
thousands and hundreds of thousands of girls who would give all that
they possess for a tithe of such riches. Also, because of the sacrifice
which is being made for them at home girls are selfish in taking their
school or college life carelessly. The school has to bear much of the
responsibility for the individual failure. But of this the student who
is failing rarely thinks. Parents hold an institution to blame if it
does not do for their child what they expect it to do, when it may be
the girl who is at fault.
In the use she makes of her portion of inheritance, in the gift the
school bestows on the student, there is a large social question
involved. The school gives her of its wealth, the result of the
accumulation of years and of the civic or philanthropic spirit of many
men and women. This, if the girl's sense of responsibility is what it
should be, she feels bound to increase and hand on. It is the old
_noblesse oblige_ under new conditions of privilege.
While she is still in school the girl discharges part of this obligation
by realizing what is best for her school as an institution. A college or
a big school is no place for vocal soloists. Its life is the life of an
orchestra, of many instruments playing together. The student's sense of
responsibility is shown by her attitude towards the corporate government
and administration of the school. Instead of regarding the laws of her
school as natural enemies, chafing against them, making fun of them or
evading them if possible, she has a duty in fulfilling them. The
consciousness of this responsibility is the very heart and soul of the
student self-government movement, for it recognizes not only the
obligation placed upon its members by an institution, but also the wide
influence one girl may have on others. Student government knows that
upper class girls can determine the spirit of the under classes. Even
looking at the matter from the lightest point of view, respectful and
law-abiding ways are always well-bred ways.
When a student becomes an alumna she can discharge a large part of her
great responsibility by realizing that it is not any longer so much a
question of what her school can give her as of what she can give to her
school. One thing she can always give it--that is, kindly judgment. And
she can acknowledge that her ideas of what her Alma Mater is after her
own school-days may not be correct. The school, sad to say, is sometimes
placed in the position of the kindly old farmer who, hearing others call
a certain man a liar, said: "Waal now, I wouldn't say he wuz a _liar_.
That's a bit harsh. I'd say he handled the truth mighty careless-like."
Schools find that some of their alumnæ handle the truth mighty
careless-like.
While she is still a student a girl's service to her school lies largely
in her daily work, the mental muscle she puts into all that she does in
the classroom and studies out of it. If because of her and a multiple of
many girls like her, the college does not possess that _sine qua non_ of
all the higher mental life, an intellectual atmosphere, it is the
student's and her multiple's fault. "You may lead a horse to water but
you cannot make it drink," may be an old adage, but it would be hard to
improve upon it. You may set before students a veritable Thanksgiving
feast of things intellectual, but if they have no eagerness, no appetite
for them, the feast remains untouched. Energy and hunger of the mind,
not the anxious hosts, will in the end decide whether that feast is or
is not to be eaten.
The school considers not only scholarship but also the sum of all that
it is, its culture, its attainment, its moral force, as these elements
are expressed in its living members, its students and its teachers--in
short, its idealism. Idealism is having one's life governed by ideals,
and an ideal is a perfect conception of that which is good, beautiful
and true. If the girl's life is not governed by ideals, how, then, can
the school hope to have its idealism live or grow? Frequently students
think of the ideals of college or school as of something outside
themselves, more or less intangible, with which they may or may not be
concerned. Students cannot do their institution a greater injury than by
harbouring such a thought, for if their sense of responsibility will
only make the idea of the school personal, then indeed will the school
be like that house upon which the rains descended and the winds blew but
it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock.