"Hey, Charlie! The new Rank List is out. I don't see your name on it," says one average undergraduate to another of the same species.
"Naw!" answers Charlie, "I'm not one of the rankest."
This man Charlie, being only an average undergraduate, can not be held up as a paragon of either wit or wisdom. But he is one of a group which tends to regard the Rank List in more or less the same way they regard the Roll of Honor of the Great War's dead; the names on it are to be respected, but not too greatly envied. Beneath these mixed feelings the cause will be suggested by an analysis of the list.
Only 27 out of 116 upperclassmen in groups one and two have achieved any degree of distinction in outside activities. Of the 89 who have achieved no such distinction some have shared the benefits of extra-curriculum work without winning laurels. But there are still others and they are too often taken by unthinking students as representative of the entire upper groups on the Rank List who have never entered the larger life of the University at all. They may be said to pursue a "Rank List" ideal, for they do nothing but study.
The college years have come and gone; Fall, Winter and Spring have issued their round of invitations to "come out and play"; the varied life which makes of college something more than a hermit's cloister, has circulated all about these men, but has not touched them. Of their relation to the college it might be said: "They are in it but not of it." Mediaeval monks possessed all the knowledge of their day; yet the conviction is now widespread that their's was a terribly warped and limited existence, and not a pattern to be copied. It would be a mistake to attribute too much sour-grape sentiment to the average undergraduate who refuses to do obeisance to a pure "Rank List" ideal. The ideal college man is an earnest student--but he is more than that. He would be a man--full and complete man--but the "Rank List" ideal too often produces only partial men, great heads on puny bodies, mere walking and talking dictionaries of facts with the sources of imagination and spirit dried up within them.
"Man is endogenous?," said Emerson, "and education is his unfolding." This is perhaps the shortest and best definition that has ever been given of that much discussed and much disputed subject. A large university like Harvard offers limitless possibilities for education in Emerson's sense of the word. Competitive contact with one's fellows in some form of undergraduate activity will often do more to "bring a man out" and help him find himself than any course he could possibly select in the University catalogue. It is not the purpose of this editorial to urge the benefits of extra-curriculum activities against those of scholarly devotion. It is the conjunction of the two that is essential, and this is the notable lack among a certain group of men of high standing on the Rank List.
Those students who have found time and opportunity to develop their bodies and their social natures, and at the same time, to achieve distinction in their studies, deserve the highest honors the University can bestow upon them. Undergraduates already recognize them as leaders. The other group--the worshippers of a "Rank List" ideal need help of some kind from the College to put them on the path toward complete development. This is just as truly a duty as that of keeping tab on a student's academic standing, for after all, a college has only one function, that of training men.
