--No, she did not understand what any reference to clubwomen, suburbs, or Helen Hokinson had to do with Wellesley.

--Yes, she said wearily, there was a place for rebels at Wellesley. (She had had experience with college newspapers before.)

The dean was right about the "rebels." One student officer, describing herself in this way, regretted that most descriptions of Wellesley College start out with a preconceived notion about the majority of students which they proceed to document--and neglect a substantial and rather vocal minority. These, she added, usually gravitate to the theatre, the paper, and the literary magazine, and "spend our time fighting for something worthwhile out here."

The indefiniteness of the last objective--"something worthwhile"--is no accident, for the dean was right too. There is no obvious Wellesley stereotype on campus. The college prides itself on the ever-widening geographical distribution of its students, and weekday dress does not fit in with the usual picture of the Wellesley girl. (Leather jackets, lumber jackets, and gym suits were scattered plentifully.)

Any objection to Wellesley must then come from something less specific than dress or a section of the country--it must come against an atmosphere. This atmosphere seems revealed best in the class sections, the basic way of teaching at Wellesley.

Elementary Level

Using Harvard as a basis for comparison, class discussion is much freer at Wellesley; there is less fear of saying the wrong thing. Wellesley's faults carry along with them merits; and although the instructor confesses that he consciously pitches the level of the discussion a little lower than he would prefer, he has the satisfaction of almost one hundred per cent participation.

Sometimes this pitch seemed a little extreme, as when the class spent some time to decide on the meaning of catharsis, and when, in the third class on the Odyssey, some of the girls were still referring to Telemachus. But the instructor hesitated to correct, and said he felt that this might make students self-conscious.

The girls were certainly not self-conscious; they, not the instructor, dominated the discussion. And, in fact, when the latter was explaining a point in some detail, one student interrupted him to ask, "Should we be copying this down?"

The idea behind this method of teaching seems almost anti-academic--that the fact of discussion is more important than the material itself. Wellesley, if articulating its justification for such a value judgment, would do it as did one professor--in terms of the terminal education.

His argument runs like this: a Wellesley student, if she really wants an academic discipline, does have a chance to work on her own if she proves her ability. She can concentrate upon almost anything she wishes, once she has gotten some broad lower-level humanities courses out of the way.

But most of these students intend to marry; and a girl's position as far as education is concerned is expected to be more flexible than that of her husband. The man can concentrate his education with a career in mind: his wife must usually adapt hers to him. Consequently, it is better that the girl come out of school with a wide-ranging background (even at the expense of its being a little nebulous) rather than emerging a rigidly intellectually formed botanist or medieval philosopher or drama critic or anything else.

Facileness, then, is prized more than conviction, and perhaps this is one reason why the class discussions are carried on so eagerly and freely, for there is the underlying feeling that it is easy to take a stand on an issue--the issue doesn't really count anyway.

This same lack of friction carries over into Wellesley's intramural social life--the upperclass societies. To join, a girl must go to tea at each one; but any junior or senior who wants it is guaranteed acceptance, and the hierarchy, if any, is slight (Tau Zeta Epsilon--"Tizzy"--seems to be ranked a notch above the rest). Far from being an important part of the college's life, either intellectual or social (they were originally formed with specific purposes in mind, for example the Agora as a political science organization), they have become merely a pleasant place to take a date. The most frequently spoken