Within the Arts college proper, considerable study of the possibility of inaugurating a General Education-type program for liberal arts students has been going on for a year or so under the director of Dean Paul M. O'Leary.

But O'Leary emphasizes that he does not regard the setting up of a program of special freshman and sophomore courses are necessarily the only or even the best solution to the problem of a liberal education. The Cornell examination of General Education, he explains, casts some doubt on the wisdom of establishing special courses which students must take in their first years in college, when they may not be properly prepared to deal with ideas on a high level.

Actually a general synthesizing course to be, taken in the junior or even the senior year might be a far more effective means of leading students toward liberal education, he says. Such a course would be a "drawing together of the threads of thought", as O'Leary phrases it, a study of ideas that students have acquired in their earlier years of more specialized training.

At present, the Arts college relies chiefly on carefully worked out distribution requirements within already existing general courses.

As at all large universities, student-faculty relationships in many of Cornell's undergraduate divisions tend to be on the remote side. Cornell has its full quota of outstanding faculty members, with reputations extending far beyond the college community, like government professor Robert E. Cushman, a leading authority in the field of civil rights, famed physicist Hans Bethe, and philosopher Max Black. Although many of these men may give the large introductory courses and try to make themselves accessible to students, the average student is likely to hold them too much in awe, especially in his early years, to approach them readily.

Probably this impersonality between student and lecturer is not carried as far at Cornell as at some other schools of comparable size, notably, Harvard. Many lecturers, even in elementary courses, make a point of giving a number of sections themselves. Of course, it is impossible to reach a large number of students in this fashion, but any contact, no matter how small, is presumably better than none at all.

Need for Intellectual Stimulation

In general, however, there appears to be less of what might be called conscious intellectual striving on the part of the Cornell student body, even in the Arts college, as compared with its Harvard counterpart. There is, to be as a means of gaining entrance to graduate school, but not so much on intellectual achievement for its own sake. Certain voluntary associations of students in cooperative houses, notably the Telluride Association, do emphasize intellectual ability in choosing their members and attempt to offer intellectually minded students an atmosphere of stimulation. But the existence of these groups is in itself perhaps a sign that such an atmosphere is not wide-spread in the student body at large.

One Cornell instructor, who formerly taught at Harvard, emphasized the willingness of Cornell students to join in classroom discussion, a quality he found somewhat lacking at Harvard because of "inhibitions" produced by the dominance of the lecture system. While admitting that Cornell students often lack the secondary school background and the outward air of sophistication of Harvard undergraduates, he felt that the open-mindedness and "eagerness to learn" of most Cornell students provided a balance.

In a number of ways, Cornell men seem rather less tradition-bound than students at certain of the other Ivy League schools, although individuals, of course, vary widely.

While most Cornell undergraduates are distinctly conscious of the fact that they are college students and hence feel they are expected to act a certain general part, they are perhaps less concerned with how a "Cornell man" specifically should act.

Many are individualistic and non-conformist by temperament, but they are not likely to be belligerently so. While they may feel the need to cultivate an indifference to certain things (most freshmen apparently never put their "dinks" on, once freshman camp is over), they are less likely to make the art of indifference a study in itself. And while they may vent their scorn verbally on hapless little Ithaca College in the town below them, they will probably not vent it on the world in general or on that portion of it unfortunate enough not to be attending Cornell.

In their social and extra-curricular life, Cornell students can be divided fairly readily into a few main groups. The most important of them are: boys and girls, fraternity men and independents.

Co-eds have been at Cornell almost since the beginning. Evidently Ezra Cornell an Andrew Dickson White had it in their heads all the time to admit women to study at their college, although they were afraid to ask the state legislature to charter a co-educational university--that sort of thing just wasn't done in the East at the time. At any rate, they were careful to see that the charter did not specifically forbid co-education.

Scholastically the girls do very well; since only a small percentage of the total number of applicants can be admitted, the admissions office can afford to be highly selective. The result is that the co-eds average three points or more above their male rivals on the Cornell marking system. That invaluable source of comparison, the former Harvard section man, even ventured to say that they are as smart as Radcliffe girls.