7

a > cee

oe

THE ‘COLLEGE NEWS

Page Seven







Miss Comstock Praises _
Scholarship Standards



Continued. from Page Five

one: which appeared in print nearly
twenty years ago might have ponsed
as well as any:

“Tt would be not only ungracious
but unjust to fail to make mention of
Miss Thomas’s extraordinary achieve-
ment in the building up of the insti-
tution over whose development she
has presided. To her resolute insist-
ence on the maintenance of high
standards, to her inexhaustible energy
and her personal force, must be
ascribed the placing of Bryn Mawr in
that high and unique position which
it occupies among women’s colleges,”

Bryn Mawr, from the-outset, claimed

a

for the education of women the beauty

of setting and the amenities of’living
which at the time were but little con-
sidered in American institutions and
are only now taking their place as
cultural influences. Assuming what
Professor Paul Shorey called her
“erenellated and machicolated splen-
dor of architectural investiture,” or-
ganizing her domestic arrangements
with a view to physical ease and com-
fort and to the maintenance of a
pleasant social life, Bryn Mawr recog-
nized earlier than other colleges have
done the part that the surroundings
and the circumstances of daily life
must play in the effect updn students
of those four “brief irrevocable years.”

So much is obvious; but another
ideal which has always seemed to me
to animate Bryn Mawr. I have never



heard avowed. Since learning began
there have been in all generations a
few examples of what one may call
the learned lady. Som*times théy
have been royal or noble; always, ex-
cept for a few instances in our own
country, they have had a background
of wealth. In every city'the memory of
such ladies is treasured; and more
than. once I have heard: colleges
charged, not only with their failure
to increase the number of such rare
beings, but with the production of con-
ditions which vent them from de-
veloping. Perhaps Bryn Mawr has
been’aware of that reproach. Perhaps
her adherencé to smallness, her stress
on the graces of living, her insistence
Jr a time upon a different between
her. own, methods and standards and
those of other institutions were rooted
in .a-hope that through her the genus
learned lady might be perpetuated and
increased.

Of another aspiration which has
been of wide service to the education
of women, Bryn Mawr has made no
secret. Her standard of scholarship
has had an uncompromising rigor.
Easy-going, slipshod, casual—can any-
one imagine the application of such
terms to the intellectual discipline of
Bryn Mawr?

Through her faculty and their par-
ticipation in the scholarly activities of
this country, through her graduate
students who became members of
faculties in other institutions, most’ of
all through the perpetual witness
borne by all Bryn Mawr women to
the seriousness and the vitality of
their intellectual discipline, Bryn



ee RSA
—



Mf























LMOws





Camels don’t affect sound

4
:



J Mild! vou can

* SMOKE ALL YOU WANT

@ There’s a bit of friendly guidance
for others in what men like Lott and
Harrison, Buster Crabbe and Sarazen,
say about Camels. They. have tested
Camels for mildness — found that

jangle their nerves. So turn to Camels. ~
You'll find real hit-the-spot flavor.
° A distinctive, pleasing taste. Smoke, .
Dam.‘ fres?; fo: athi. 2s fiz dCam3s =:
don’t disturb their “condition.” Cost-
lier tobaccos do make a difference!

wind or



© 1986, B, J. Reynolds Tob. Oo,










Mawr asserted and proved that ‘a col- | Another of the delicate balances

lege for women could not. only meet
the best standards of the day but could
infuse a new vigor into the pursuit of
scholarship.

A share of the praise which we of-
fer to" Bryn Mawr today should, I
think, be devoted to her perspicacity
in divining thegart which it was open
to her to play. To the public she
demonstrated that higher education
for women was not merely a means of
preparation for earning a_ livelihood,
that it was not apologetic or imitative,
but that it was capable of making a
distinct and original contribution to
the academic life of our times.

Is_romance then dead? Are there
no more giants to be slain?: I would
say rather that the women’s colleges,
relieved at last from wasting strength

on a kind of guerilla warfare, could!

now try—are now trying—to give ac-'
tive aid in the attack on the common
foe. igher education as I see it has
alwayS@mefore it three insoluble prob-
lems, 0 ther, three reconciliations
with which it must always struggle.
One is the reconciliation which Mr.
Meiklejohn once termed that of de-
mocracy and distinction. To make
higher education accessible to the
many, and, at the same time, chal-
lenging and satisfying to the superior
few is a puzzle susceptible only of an
approximate solution. Here such a
college as Bryn Mawr, high in reputa-
tion but determined to remain small
in numbers, may make a. valuable con-
tribution in developing better, juster,
more intelligent Standards of selection
of candidates for admission.











with which higher education must be

perpetually concerned is.that between:

extensiveness and intensiveness. How
broadly informed should one be who
aspires.to the Bachelor of Arts degree,
and how can such breadth be recon-
ciled with the depth and thoroughness
in some field which is essential to in-
tellectual discipline? Here the col-
leges for women have an opportunity
to ‘contribute something in practice
and theory. Even ‘today, when so
many women are -preparing them-
selves to earn a living, the idea’ of
education for its own sake is perhaps
(though I am aware of some of the
exceptions which might well be taken
to this statement) somewhat more
readily accepted in them than in the
colleges for men. The conception of
the cultivated woman as interpreted
in the women’s colleges has its part
to play in our general conception of
culture.

The third ever-present problem, as
I see it, is the reconciliation between

ditions and problems, and that wpich
é



~

,
the long and the short view, between

instruction aimed specifically at in-
troducing students to present .day con-

aims rather to introduce them to fields
of thought ‘and knowledge through
material, on which. the mind of*man
has had time to work and which has
been weighed and winnowed by time
itself. To’ my own way of thinking,
however, the problem’is far more one
of the teacher than of the curriculum,
It is the able teacher with his revela-
tion of the significant, his introduc-
tion to the way in--which to think
about things who prepares his stu-
dents to deal with the problems of
the present ‘and of the future, and in
comparison with the quality of his
mind the subject matter with which
he makes his demonstrations is rela-
tively unimportant.

Beyond its ceaseless struggle with
these problems, every college or uni-
versity which has existed long enough
to feel itself. an organism cherishes,

Continued on Page Bight







sD









Javatan

A new rust color
in Service calf.

Also. a new Wales
model. Heavy welt

sole. leather heel.
12,5°

Claflin

1606 Chestnut Street











your Wind

ATHLETES AGREE

@ If you have searched for cigarette mildness, mark the words of
George Lott, the tennis champion, and the 7-goal polo star, Cyril
Harrison. “Camels,” says Mr. Harrison, “are so mild they don’t upset
the nerves or affect the wind. And when I’m tired I get a ‘lift’ with
a Camel.” And Lott adds: “I understand that more expensive tobac-
cos are used in Camels. They are gentle on the throat. And Camels
never get my wind.” Turn to Camels and enjoy to the full the pleas-
ure that comes from costlier tobaccos.





~

Some of the famous
athletes who approve of

Camel’s mildness

ae BASEBALL: Gabby Hartnett,

Leo



| cost ER TOBACCOS!_-

@ Camels are made from finer, MORE
EXPENSIVE TOBACCOS —Turkish and

Chicago Cubs; Tommy Bridges,
Detroit Tigers; Dizzy Dean, St.
Louis Cardinals; Lou Gehrig, New
York Yankees; Melvin Ott; New
York Giants.

TENNIS: Ellsworth Vines, Jr.;
William T. Tilden, 2nd; George M.
Lott, Jr.; Lester R. Stoefen; Bruce
Barnes. .

GOLF: Gene Sarazen, Craig Wood, °
Tommy Armour, Willie Macfarlane,
Helen Hicks, Denny Shute.

TRACK AND FIELD: Jim Bausch,
Olympic Decathlon Champion;
George Barker, Former Intercol-
legiate Cross-Country Champion;

Sexton, Olympic Shot-Put

Champion.

SWIMMING: Helene Madison,
Stubby Kruger, Josephine McKim,
Buster Crabbe, Jane Fauntz.

DIVING: Harold (“Dutch”) Smith,
Georgia Coleman, Pete Desjardins,
Sam Howard.





Domestic—than any other popular brand.

—o

Gent R. J. REYNOLDS TQBACCO ‘COMPANY

Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Cote