Angell's Tread

The Yale Daily News last week suggested that the highest honor for graduating students on Commencement Day "will be the novel privilege of seeing the President of Yale University [Dr. James Rowland Angell]. Of course, those who do not receive the sheepskin will have completed their four years without resting eyes on this personage. This picture of conditions is a little overdrawn, but the fact remains that at no time during the college year does the President meet the student body."

Until the last two decades, the college president was as important a part of undergraduate life as the campus fence. Not to have sat frequently on, or been sat on by, one or the other was not to have been to college. "Prexy" knew most of the students by name, invited them to his house for tea. He preached to them in chapel and, in smaller colleges, he often had a lecture course. Fame was achieved by the student who could best imitate "Prexy's" peculiarities. The college president of last century was a Campus Character.

Today, the heads of the larger colleges and universities tend to bear the same relation to the students as the presidents of oil companies bear to the motorists who stop at filling stations. The average student knows the name of his president, has heard him make one or two speeches, suspects that he is a busy man running the university and raising funds.

In most cases this undergraduate suspicion is well founded. But there is another reason for presidential isolation. Modern four-button, Ide collar undergraduates are more sophisticated than they were in the heyday of the turtlenecked sweater. They are finicky about their friends. They would be standoffish should any president seek to backslap and fraternize. Often they are best left to their self-sufficient devices. "Perhaps," said a jokester, "only fools rush in where Angells fear to tread."