comment on the part of the student body. Thus, a freshman in agriculture adds to his report: "It may not be out of place to remark that, if President Schurman went to a Huestis Street boarding-house, he would not require two hours for meals."
So, as a matter of interest, a record was made of all the individual students who give six hours or less weekly to meals. As summarized in Table 4, 215 men and 5 women, or 24.6 per cent, of the students who answered our inquiry, give but 20 minutes or less to each meal. When it is remembered that most of the students eat in boarding-houses where more or less time is lost by the slowness of the service, some idea is afforded of the unwarrantable haste with which students eat.[1]
Furthermore, numerous students report 45 minutes, others 40, 35 or 30 minutes; last of all, a junior in architecture gives 26 minutes daily to his meals. Certainly we should welcome any influence which could make the student's dining-table more attractive as a place for leisurely eating and beneficial conversation.[2]
The time given to sleep is very uniform, with the variations wider below than above; the longest sleepers are two young men, a senior in law and a junior in mechanical engineering, who demand ten hours daily, while one student reports but six hours; two, five and two thirds hours; and one, a freshman in agriculture, only five and a half hours, daily.[3]
The unclassified time is regularly higher in women's than in men's reports, while the extreme of 7.43 hours daily not otherwise accounted
- ↑ Doubtless many of these 220 students prepare their own breakfast, and make a very simple fare of fruit, cereals and milk. If ten minutes sufficed for this, they might spend 25 minutes each upon the two remaining meals at some boarding-house.
- ↑ The trouble may lie in part in the fact that the atmosphere of the typical college boarding-house is one of haste: the table service, and even some share of the preparation of food and the resetting of tables and washing of dishes, falls to student waiters who must hurry their fellows to save time enough for their own meals. And, at Cornell, this haste is augmented by the prevalence of 'eight o'clocks,' and by the restriction of the noon interval, in many cases, to the single hour between one and two, and, still further, by the fact that nearly all the students board off the campus and must take practically a mile walk for their lunch. Some confirmation of this opinion may be seen in the higher average for meal hours of the women who board in commons on the campus. But the trouble lies even more, in my opinion, in the fact that the average student has never been 'educated' to a proper recognition of the possibilities of the dinner-table as a place for general conversation, for the exchange of views, for the leisurely discussion of college news and of the events of the day in the world outside. The 'talk while you eat' habit should replace the 'bolt and run' habit.
- ↑ This young man rises every morning at four o'clock, and works seven hours every day for his support.
