Show m STUDENT LIFE and enviable record and to become a member of the ’Varsity crew or of the baseball team or track team is the goal of many a budding athlete’s desires If he wants merely exercise and doesn’t care about renown be may enter the golf or cricket or lawn-tennleague or join a club which cultivates fencing y running swimming hockey shooting or skating Lawn tennis is a favorite sport an entire field with courts innumerable is at the disposal of the students Among several thousand young men brought for a long period into the companionship of student life one expects to find numerous societies Naturally enough those having similar aims or tastes are drawn more closely together and when the nucleus has attracted a of congenial sufficient number spirits an organization is the inevitable result Still it is astonishing to learn that over too student organizations of every conceivable nature are in active existence The real essence of the current student life of any institution centers and finds its best expression in the student societies and student publications These indicate the direction of the intellectual currents These numerous societies are the natural outgrowth of the social instincts of the students and the sympathy of congeniality and common interests Their importance from the intellectual and especially from the social standpoint is inestimable They exert a powerful influence on the young man’s development and play is cross-countr- their part in the building of characters and shaping of careers The majority of these clubs make social intercourse and fellowship the main object but usually a secondary aim is kept in view Some are almost purely educational as the Botanical Club the Chemical Club the National History Society and the various language societies Clubs like the Chess Tournament the Whist Club and the Camera Club bring the members into very Then there intimate association are practical clubs which manage the Dining Associations and the Society whose stores supply at considerable reduction everything a student needs There are political clubs and debating clubs medical clubs and law clubs graduate clubs and reform clubs clubs whose members are from the same state or from the same preCo-operati- ve paratory school The musical clubs are many and one of them the Pierian Sodality dating from 1806 boasts of being the oldest musical society in the country It is said that in the early part of last century its membership was reduced to one man who “elected himself to all the offices attended faithfully his own rehearsals and thus carried the club through the This society together with the Mandolin Banjo or Guitar Club often plays in the yard on warm evenings of May and June There have always been and still are many religious societies among the students The Y M C A is There is a Catholic flourishing year” |