“The balloting is all over with at Princeton and the results are public. The favorite beverage of the senior class is whiskey. The favorite actress is Lynn Fontanne. The favorite artist is Arno, with Titian second and Leonardo third. The favorite poem is “If“. The greatest benefit derived from college is “contacts”.
“Having cast their votes, the seniors are all ready to go forth into the world of affairs, where, the way things look now, they will be temporarily immersed in a long green wave of unemployment.
“At New Haven this year, the results of the Yale senior balloting are not to be made public, so we understand. It seems that there is some question about the advisability of revealing undergraduate tastes. It must worry the mothers of prospective Princeton students to learn that the favorite beverage of the seniors is whiskey, and it also must worry the generous old grads to learn that the money they gave Alma Mater is just developing “contacts”.
“Personally we think college education, even in its present comical setting, mixed all up as it is with Titian, Fontanne, Whiskey, Arno, Kipling, and Contacts, is a good thing; but we often pause to think what fabulous sums of money would be turned loose on the world if ever it were discovered, suddenly, that the American system of education was really wrong, and didn’t actually work at all.”
– E. B. White, 1930
Sooooo true!