The manners, dress, speech and tastes of the average college freshman today, whether he matriculates from Public School 19 or the hedged and sheltered confines of Groton or Andover, derive from the usages of Hollywood, according to the recently asserted views of a prominent educator. "The accent of the modern freshman from high school, his tastes in music, politics and drama have been influenced by the same agencies as those of wealthier and more urban students," says Harold H. Lobdell, dean of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Well, if this is so, and Dean Lobdell should know whereof he speaks, the campus at least more accurately and with greater fidelity imitates the screen than the screen recreates the campus, since film views of the academic life have usually been more comical than representative. But somehow it is hard to visualize the bright young men of New Haven and Cambridge assuming to any very great degree the dramatic attitudes of Hollywood, even in its more turtle-necked moments. Screen commonplaces unblushingly uttered by collegians on location would evoke inextinguishable mirth at Soldiers Field or in the precincts of Connecticut Hall, and the degree to which jealous shootings, passionate romances, Minerva motor cars and the abduction of football players figure in real college life is still a little below the requirements of most film directors.

Still Dean Lobdell may sense a trend rather than its accomplishment, in which case the time is not far distant when undergraduate rooms will really be decked with pennants, when there will be three fair co-eds surrounding each freshman and when poisoning is the least that may be expected by triple-threat men on the eve of the gamefl --New York Herald-Tribune.