Word: thoughtlessness
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Each year brings the same appeals from different committees and officers of the Senior class. The Secretary complains that men are slow and thoughtless about sending in the answered questions for their "Class Lives," the Class Committee, that the Class Fund is not receiving sufficient support, and the Photographic Committee has its annual wail about the Portfolio, and how men must keep their appointments...
...strictest following of that suggestion, however, can hardly justify one old custom-the Memorial Hall custom of stamping whenever some thoughtless visitor in the gallery keeps on his hat. There is not dignity or point enough in the practice to make it worth the name of a Harvard custom. Few visitors know what the stamping means when it begins and only a part of them find out before it ends. The rest go away with strange ideas of Harvard manners. All in the gallery must feel uncomfortable and embarrassed to see several hundred men gaping and stamping at them...
...nevertheless, be fooled sometimes than be suspicious always (and be fooled quite as often). Frankly treated, the student is usually frank himself; our undergraduates are, in general, excellent follows to deal with: yet so much is done for then, so many opportunities are lavished on them, that the more thoughtless fail to see the relation of their rights to other people's, and, in the self-importance of early manhood, forget that the world is not for them alone. Students of this kind need delicate handling. They jealously demand to be treated as men, take advantage of the instructors...
...means maintain the Harvard spirit of dignity and conservatism,- it affords the best of training,- but do not overdo it; let the thoughtless be more thoughful of others, and the over-sensitive less so. As to clubs, my experience has shown me that there are just as refined, manly men outside of clubs as in them, and in one club as another; such organizations could use their influence as well to establish and maintain an esprit du corps of all the students as to gain advatage exclusively for themselves...
...tried, some lessening of the evils will take place. But the greater part of the work in lessening the evil lies with the clubs and with the individuals. There is too great a lack among undergraduates of consideration of their classmates, and too much forced formality. "Let the thoughtless be more thoughtful of others, and the over-sensitics, less so." A live enthusiasm in athletics, in debating, or in any field of action of interest to all alike will also go far to join all classes together and to destroy all unnatural social divisions...