Small Endowment

Deep down at the bottom of Brown's failure in its quest for Ivy League leadership has been its lack of funds. A small endowment and heavy dependence on yearly gifts will continue to be the largest single stumbling block in the university's future quest for a nationally respected faculty. Without these funds Wriston faces the almost impossible task of offering instruction equal to the best in the Ivy.

Without the money to pay for outstanding professors, Brown has already defaulted in perhaps the major requirement for an international educational reputation. The university still manages to attract a sound faculty, especially in History. Wriston pushes it hard to produce.

Among the Ivy group he offers relatively more freedom from administrative duties to faculty members than do other universities which give them more time for research. But the university does not have a faculty noted for its scholarship, nor for its influence in national affairs. An increase in the size of the "IC" program will mean still additional faculty and extra expense to the university.

The lack of funds goes beyond the faculty. Brown offers as many scholarships as Harvard, but can afford to give only about 60 percent as much to each applicant. Time and again, one of the other Ivy Colleges steals away a prospective top student by offering him considerably more than Brown could. In a typical case Wriston contacted a particularly brilliant student whom he wanted to get into Brown's freshman class this year. He offered the high school senior $700. But the student went to Harvard under the blessing of a $1500 grant. Still, Brown, like Harvard, this year has one of the best freshman classes it has every attracted.

Since the college cannot compete for top students on an equal basis with most of the Ivy, Brown finds itself accepting a greater percentage of lower percentile applicants than do its competitors. Starting with less top grade talent the college--small to begin with--further decreases its chances of producing the intellectual leaders it would like.

In addition, Wriston's insistence upon strict academic standards means that a correspondingly higher percentage of students flunk out every year. Of the present senior class at Brown only 365 remain from an original freshman group of over 600. This sharp drop is a public warning that Brown expects its students to keep their averages up. It also suggests that Wriston may be overdoing his quest for the top. He may be asking for more than his students are intellectually capable of producing.

The Brown man is fighting a reputation of middle-class mediocrity. He wants to be Ivy but he has nothing distinctively Ivy to offer, He Cannot be typed beyond "urban" and "conservative." He passes his drinking tradition on to Dartmouth, his "second-choice college" reputation to U. Va. and he dares not rest on the small college theme of friendliness.

There could be one distinctive characteristic of a Brown man. It's a combination of pluckiness and warmth, found no where else in the League. Since the days of Roger Williams, this friendly atmosphere has hung about the nation's tenth oldest college. Even before the unifying influence of quadrangle, generations of Brown men opened their college careers on a note of class cohesion and Brown loyalty.

Vigilance and Unity

The Vigilance Committee, dating from the college's earliest history, assumes the job of instilling in each incoming class Brown's friendly tradition. The "V. C," meets the freshmen armed with 600 odd beanies, a list of college rules, and a collection of Brown songs.

For two hectic weeks they persecute the freshman into avoiding forbidden gates, scrupulously wearing their beanies to bed, and serenading Pembroke at two in the morning. The climax of this hazing comes in a "greased-pole fight," when freshmen battle sophomores for a little white flag perched on a tall greasy pole. The sophomores have lost the trophy only twice in the V. C.'s history. But regardless of outcome, the freshmen have legally earned the right to toss off their beanies.

Out of it all comes the Brown man... whose major social faux pas is to walk past a classmate without saying hello. In the confines of the Quadrangle, the ultimate law is friendliness.

Within these same confines, fraternity "Rush Week" starts 30 per cent of the freshman class toward a set of contradictory attitudes. Fraternities are the social life of the college. Denied these social advantages for six months, the freshman at "Rush Week" discards his class loyalties and submerges himself in fraternity life.

Loyalty Clash