EDITORIAL.
109
HOG-WASH.
"One student of our State University was filled with birdshot while howling on Hallowe'en, and two others were arrested for their depredations. A freshman ball was broken up by the sophomores, who scattered red pepper on the floor. It seems, with all the boasted reforms lately, that the manners of the young gentlemen are not improving."
The above, originally from the Atchison Champion, we believe, has been going the rounds of the state press with such comment as these: "This is the way students in the State University are making their mark," and "Nihilism is taking a practical form." To use a favorite expression of the Champion, all this is "hog-wash." In the first place no student was shot or even shot at; in the second place the case against the two students arrested was withdrawn at the cost of the complainant, there being no proof against them; and in the third place no Freshman ball was broken up by the Sophomores. Occasionally our students perpetrate a joke. They wouldn't be students if they didn't. There is, however, less rowdyism here than at any university east or west, including the various high schools called "colleges" scattered over the prairies. There has never been a case of hazing at this place. We venture the assertion that there is not a town with a dozen boys in the state, where there are not more pranks played every month than the students play here in the course of a whole year.
A NEW FEATURE.
The Normal Literary Society has adopted and successfully carried out a feature of society work original with themselves. Each week a short lecture is given by a professor on some line of study connected with his department. The subjects chosen have
been of common interest and have been free from the technical terms which render so many of these lectures uninteligible to the general student. In point of instruction and entertainment they have been far superior to the mass of lectures given in the regular University course and infinitely ahead of certain individual ones we might mention. The Normals are to be congratulated on the success they have made of their new feature.
The present college year has opened with an amount of gaiety unusual for even the gayest of our gay students. Dancing, theatres, parties, roller skating, excursions, athletic sports, literary societies, secret societies, and oratorical societies-to say nothing of lectures and editorial duties which are not usually placed in the category of gaieties-have taken an immense amount of students' time. In-as-much as the time-honored lecture against these "frivolities"'has not been delivered from the chapel rostrum this term, we would suggest that those who are doing justice to all these pleasures, are doing little to their studies. Fun is entitled to a large space in the college curriculum. We are afraid, however, that with some it is absorbing the room of all the other branches.
Provision was made by the Regents last Wednesday for the introduction of Spanish into the University. Professors Carruth and Canfield will teach this branch until further arrangements are made. Engineering and chemistry students who expect to pursue work in the southwest will find a knowledge of Spanish an invaluable adjunct to their other education. It is one of the required studies in the West Point Military Academy.
We learn from the newspapers that four Baldwin students have been expelled for drunkenness. We always said that the nearness of the State University had a bad influence on the morals of Baker.