While she is still in school the girl discharges part of this obligation by realizing what is best for her school as an institution. A college or a big school is no place for vocal soloists. Its life is the life of an orchestra, of many instruments playing together. The student's sense of responsibility is shown by her attitude towards the corporate government and administration of the school. Instead of regarding the laws of her school as natural enemies, chafing against them, making fun of them or evading them if possible, she has a duty in fulfilling them. The consciousness of this responsibility is the very heart and soul of the student self-government movement, for it recognizes not only the obligation placed upon its members by an institution, but also the wide influence one girl may have on others. Student government knows that upper class girls can determine the spirit of the under classes. Even looking at the matter from the lightest point of view, respectful and law-abiding ways are always well-bred ways.
When a student becomes an alumna she can discharge a large part of her great responsibility by realizing that it is not any longer so much a question of what her school can give her as of what she can give to her school. One thing she can always give it--that is, kindly judgment. And she can acknowledge that her ideas of what her Alma Mater is after her own school-days may not be correct. The school, sad to say, is sometimes placed in the position of the kindly old farmer who, hearing others call a certain man a liar, said: "Waal now, I wouldn't say he wuz a _liar_. That's a bit harsh. I'd say he handled the truth mighty careless-like." Schools find that some of their alumnæ handle the truth mighty careless-like.
While she is still a student a girl's service to her school lies largely in her daily work, the mental muscle she puts into all that she does in the classroom and studies out of it. If because of her and a multiple of many girls like her, the college does not possess that _sine qua non_ of all the higher mental life, an intellectual atmosphere, it is the student's and her multiple's fault. "You may lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink," may be an old adage, but it would be hard to improve upon it. You may set before students a veritable Thanksgiving feast of things intellectual, but if they have no eagerness, no appetite for them, the feast remains untouched. Energy and hunger of the mind, not the anxious hosts, will in the end decide whether that feast is or is not to be eaten.