Y es ~» * Page Two THE COLLEGE NEWS THE COLLEGE NEWS (Founded in 1914) Bryn Mawr College. Published weekly during the College Year (except during Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter holidays, and during examination weeks) in the interest of Bryn Mawr College at the Ardmore Printing Company, Ardmore, Fa., and Editor-in-Chief. The College News is fully protected by copyright. in it may be reprinted either wholly or in part without permission of the Nothing that appears Mary Vircinia More, ’45, Copy APRIL OURSLER, "46 — Naney Morenouse, °47 MarGarET Rupp, °47 THELMA BALDASSARRE, ’47 RosaAMOND Brooks, *46 Mapccta DembBow,.’47 Cecit1a ROSENBLUM,. ’47 E.IzABETH Day, *47 Sports Carox BALiarp, 45 SaRAH G. BECKWITH, °46 Harji Maik, *45 ELIzABETH MANNING, 746 NaNcy STRICKLER, °47 Editorial Board ALISON MERRILL, 45, ° Editor-in-Chief Editorial Staff— Photographer HANNAH KAUFMANN, 746 Business Board Mita AsHODIAN, °46, Business Manager BarBara WiiiiaMs, °46, Advertising Manager ANN WERNER, 747 Subscription Board MarGareET Loup, 46, Manager Patricia PLATT, ’45, News SUSAN OULAHAN, °46, News Patricia BEHRENS, °46 LANIER DuNN, °47 _ Darst Hyatt, *47 MonnieE BELLow, *47 Rosina BATESON, °47 EmyLy Eyarts, ’47 ZaurRA DImMonp, *47 Cartoons JEAN SMITH, °46 ANNE KINGsBuRY, "47 CHARLOTTE BINGER, *45 Lovina. BRENDLINGER, °46 HELEN GILBERT, "46 Entered as second class matter at the Ardmore, Pa., Post Office , Under Act of Congress August 24, 1912 The New Magazine Within the coming week, a new literary magazine will make its appearance on campus, in answer to the challenge thrown out by the abandonment of the Lantern. It is an ac- tualization of the general campus feeling that there should and must be an organ of expression for creative talent. We had been told by the editors of the Lantern that there was neither the material nor the demand for a maga- zine. The answer ,to the latter of these charges was evi- denced first in News editorials calling either for the revival of the Lantern, or for a completely new magazine, and finally in the effort of these five Freshmen who initiated the pub- lication of The Title. Material is obviously® present It is in a way a sad comment that the only members of the undergraduate body to take constructive action in oppo- sition to the statement of the Lantern editors were Fresh- men. It may be that the upperclassmen have become so stagnated, and are immersed so deeply in a traditional in- ertia, that they have not the interest or the drive to put over such a plan. The detail work involved in carrying out the conception of a new magazine is staggering. It is more than commendable that such a small group, and-such a—young group could see it through. But if the upperclassmen, and the campus as a whole, are guilty of inertia and lack of interest, they can be vindi- cated only by wholehearted, sympathetic and constructive support of The Title. The material contained in it is varied, original, and high in quality. ‘There can be no question of its being unrepresentative, no charge of over-stereotyped stor- ies. uted to the maiden issue. poetry are included. Our students, our faculty, and one alumna have contrib- Humor, philosophy, fiction and Its founders and initiators have done a tremendous job. They have not only made a contribution to campus life, but have given actual proof that the creative spirit is not dead at Bryn Mawr. We are not limited to griping and theoriz- ing. Constructive action has been taken. It is the duty of the undergraduate body to support it. Only with our sup- port can it succeed. WIT*S END “There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip”—and even more in the copy! Review the news of the year for us, say the alumnae, but we, leafing through the files, see only the nightmares of num- erous nights on the News. “Where’s Chan’s head?” “Who's sitting on the Vocational. Confer- ence?” and “Let’s cut. two inches off Manning.” : On and on we go, on past.the closing of our Soda Fountain of, knowledge, on past the evening visit of Joe the Watchman, on past smoking room. Professor O. Hal- eski becomes O’Haska. The lec- turer speaks in “Armor.” Eyery Trapp has a great big Trapp and the littlest Trapp is Johannes Trapp and it all came from a New York press agent. Bertrénd Russell reviews prin- ciples of interference in logic. Smedley raises the red bar in China. Students are requested to stop cutting professors’ glasses. Geology class takes field slip. “Oh, send out our best reporters to in- terview the squirrels.” “Has anybody seen Merrill, the dummy? I mean has anybody seen the dummy, Merrill? I mean, who has-the copy,-and why wouldn’t they serve model-to the Liquor the last cigarette, on to the Rhoads League? Donnelly Recalls History Of Literary Attempts On Campus (Editor’s note: The News asked Miss Lucy Martin Donnelly, ’93, var- iously reader, lecturer, associate pro- fessor and professor of English from 1896 to 1936, to. contribute to special issue for the alumnae some- thing of the history of the Lantern. Miss Donnelly felt that she could not write an adequate history of the Lantern without more research into the past than she was able to under- take at that time, but she very“grac- iously wrote in its stead a letter to the News). In brief, I remember hardly more than the thrilling occasion in the old sitting-room in Merion when the plan for a college mag- azine was launched by Elizabeth Winsor Pearson; the design for the cover by Maxwell Parrish promised by a cousin of his; the first years when ’92, ’93, ’94 were editors and the stories and_ es- says contributed—at that period we wrote ‘“essays’—all seemed brilliant and delightful. Even then 95, more sophisticated than the earlier classes, thinking the Lan- tern stodgy and precious, set wp’ in rivalry probably the cleverest paper that Bryn Mawr has ever had, The Fortnightly Philistine. After a few years, The Philistine, pure and simple, succeeded it. Then the Typti-o-bob and the Col- lege News came to fill the de- mand for current information. Meanwhile the Lantern has had a checkered history between per- iods of spirited revival and of non-existence altogether, such as they tell me now threatens. A journal which is not merely a newspaper presents serious prob- lems in a small college as hard- working as Bryn Mawr and is apt to be successful only at times when a group of students _ spec- ially interested, take it in hand with zest and talent. Such times inevitably recur; from the prom- ise among student writers at present the College--may well be on the eve of one. “The old Bryn Mawr”, about which you ask, other alumnae can create for you better than I who have been so long closely connected with the College that the earlier _years_are almost lost for me in the gradual unfolding of the later. The intellectual in- terest has been from first to last the very heart of all, but with time “the trees on the campus have grown”, as an alumnae once pointed out with surprise. The life had been enriched and the ac- tivities more varied. The Cloisters nowadays, I confess, are strange to me, the hair worn to Victorian eyes a la dishabille. Yet the oth- er evening when I saw the Mika- do with President McBride at my side as I used to see undergradu- ate performances with President Thomas I recognized Bryn Mawr unmistakably—and happily—des- pite the Japanese setting. Not that the music of old equalled that of the ’40’s by a long shot. In the ’80’s and ’90’s we had only a tinkling piano in the little new brick gym to accompany our In- dian Clubs and Chest-weights. The 40’s looked, and may I sav “acted” Bryn-Mawr—might ‘2. been 97, 1908, 08, °1f, Zi, ’22 or any of the other 20’s or 30’s. The admirable choruses, the sweet- singing Yum Yum, the Ko Ko skillfully, gracefully _ executing capers, the Mikado taller and of a more awful humor than perhaps any yet on the Dryn Mawr stage. The College has not only im- mensely bettered its music, but its traditions of good acting and of wit have mellowed with its fifty-nine years. Sincerely yours, Lucy Martin Donneliy the | net be approached directly with- English Composition Staff Asserts Liberal Aims Of Course — __ To the Editor: Now that the results of-the_ poll on Required English Composition have been analyzed, it seems ap- propriate for the staff to say some- thing further about the course. We do not think that most students, if they understood the issues, would wish to see the course re- duced to the mere imposition of technique or the mere imparting of information. (We believe that the course must be continued as a liberal one in which the focus is on the individual] student and the independence of her thinking. We have perhaps been mistaken in as- suming that the relation of these aims to the teaching of writing has been clear; but, it is now ap- parent that the connection has not been understood. The majority of students, once they the with which we have to deal, will understand problems probably want to seé only such changes made in the course as will make it better adapted to the needs of the individual. We feel it is necessary, therefore, to give a brief description of those problems and to outline our prin- ciples in dealing with them. The most obvious problem in writing is the observance of a set of con- ventions: grammar, spelling punc- tuation, sentence structure, usage. On most of these there is general agreement, and the teacher’s task is to see that they are observed. Usage changes with time, how- ever; the prose of the twentieth century is not that of the nine- teenth. We endeavor to take as our standard the usage of the best contemporary writers. We do not hold ourselves responsible for enforcing outworn conven- tions; that we should regard as pedantry. A second problem, one which goes beyond the question of convention, is logic: the ar- rangement of thought within the sentence, the paragraph, and the essay as a whole, This—-is——no superficial question, and a large part of the teacher’s time is oc- cupied with it. For the student, indeed for all of us, logic in writ- ing is connected with the clarity, independence, and integrity of ‘thinking. Clear thinking, in turn, depends upon honest observation of facts, and upon ability to set aside self-interest and emotional bias. Therefore it is necessary that students should write often from first-hand observation and sometimes on controversial sub- jects. Correctness and logic are very important qualities in writing, but a student often hopes_ to achieve something further. She wants to form ,her own manner of writing, her own style.- This third problem is difficult and can- jut more harm than benefit. An | assumed style is a collection of mannerisms. A true style is the direct reflection of an individual’s manner of thinking;: it is the re- sult of the convictions and the re- lationships that make us what we are, and it is attained only by a process of maturing. Goethe said: “the style of b writer is \ a faithful representative of his mind; therefore, if any man wish to write a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul”, The reading assigned in the re- quired ‘composition course is in- | ES. c vents ‘ Common Room, May 16. “The poll tax is the greatest single bar- rier to democratic voting,” declar- ed Susan B. Anthony II in a talk on The Poll Tax and the Election. “Once it is defeated the way will be open for a surge of liberalism in the South.” At present, she explained, ten million American citizens are virtually disfranchised, _ a fact which accounts for the re- ' actionary nature of the. present ‘Congress. Only twenty -two..-percent...of. Southerners of voting age may vote; three percent actually elect the congressmen, as contrasted with twenty-five percent in the North. Thus it happens that more votes are cast for two representa- tives in Rhode Island than for fifty poll tax representatives—that is, that it takes seven times as many votes to elect a Northern as a Southern congressman. The South- erners also stay in office much longer; in the last election, sixty of seventy-nine poll tax congress- men had no opposition. From being a local problem, the poll tax has become a national is- sue, Miss Anthony declared. Lib- erals and labor leaders in the South had hoped that the latest poll tax bill might be passed, but it was indirectly defeated yester- day by a vote of “no closure.” The poll tax is not a race ques- tion; as a matter of fact more whites than negroes are disen- franchised by it. Nor does it in- volve the issue of states’ rights, for “only federal action can get rid of this blight.”” The poll tax is purely political, a measure or- iginated in 1890 to block the Pop- ulist Party, composed of farmers. and workers, and it has been act- ive ever since in keeping low in- come groups from the polls. Miss Anthony emphasized the importance of supporting the next anti-poll tax movement, for it is an issue “which not only deter- mines the kind of legislation we get, but also the kind of world we live in.” She illustrated this point with the consistent sabotage of progressive legislation by poll tax congressmen, and said that ten out of twenty-four committees in the Senate, and fourteen out of twenty-four in the House are-dom- inated by poll taxers. tended to assist the student to think with more maturity. At the end of the year the student will have come into contact with a number of the most important ideas operative in the contempor- ary world. Unless she is wholly inaccessible to ideas, some of these will have had an effect on her mind. She will have been stimulated to do her own thinking on some of the problems that are of most importance to all of us; ad to the extent that her thinking has crystallized, she will have de- veloped her own manner of ex- pression. Acquiring a body of informa- tion and conventional habits of expression is only a part of edu- cation. But if we make of this acquisition an end in itself, edu- cation becomes an extremely friv- olous and egotistical affair. For some years now the women’s col- leges have pioneered in giving to the study of English a more ser- ious aim. We are confident that Bryn Mawr does not wish to lead a retrograde movement , toward the older modes of teaching. “We shall continue to regard the teach- ing of writing not as a narrowly utilitarian instrument, but as a serious intellectual pursuit. The Required English Composition Staff. a