"National" Universities
With state and city universities snowballing along to ever huger proportions, privately endowed universities have lately felt it necessary for fame's sake, to advertise that their aim is "quality, not quantity." Harvard, Yale and Princeton have also stressed the point that they are "national" universities. And last week Yale, standing twelfth in point of size among the 86 representative institutions included in the Boston Transcript's annual survey,* pointed to itself as "most national" of the so-called Big Three. Taking the data of the classes of 1926 to 1929 inclusive, Yale proved itself Big Three favorite in 24 states. Princeton was second, leading in twelve states. Harvard, with the largest enrollment of the Big Three, led in ten states. There were three ties.
Yale States: New York, Connecticut, Vermont, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, California, Oregon, Iowa, Washington, North Dakota, Minnesota, District of Columbia. Ties: with Princeton in Illinois; with Harvard in Utah.
Princeton States: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Nevada. Tie: with Harvard for Mississippi.
Harvard States: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, Georgia, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho.
Yale attempted no national comparison of itself with that huge cosmopolite, Columbia University.
Graduations
Principal Frank L. Morse of Harrison Technical High School, Chicago, took his seat on the platform for graduating exercises last week with the air of a man who has just asserted himself. He eyed the graduating class with satisfaction. There was no pupil there who did not belong. Principal Morse faced the gathering of parents and friends, and prepared to begin the ceremonies.
But some of the parents were restlessly craning their necks, standing up to see better. "I don't see Bertha," a woman whispered. "Where's Rebecca, where's Rebecca? They can't start without Rebecca!" chattered another. "Sumpthing has happened!" The excitement spread. The parents of 22 girls made each other mob-conscious that sumpthing had happened. From a nearby classroom came sounds suggesting what that sumpthing was. It sounded like 22 girls crying, screaming, hysterical. Anxious parents rushed forward. Where was Bertha? Where Rebecca? What had they done, when were they coming. ... What? He had locked them in a classroom, guarded by teachers and refused to let them be in the graduating ceremony because they had cut all their classes that morning? What? In spite of Teacher Nettie Chadwick's having advised them to get their hair curled rather than come to school? What? He would not let them out now? Their graduating dresses would be wasted? What? He defied their parents?... Blows pelted on Principal Morse. His hair was mussed, his clothes torn. Parents, whose children sat in the auditorium waiting to be launched upon their careers with inspiring words from Principal Morse, tried to defend him. The irate squad was more numerous. Hair was pulled, eyeglasses flew off. Someone turned in a riot call. But the parents soon dragged Principal Morse from his high horse. The 22 prisoners, red-eyed, indignant, joined their classmates. When the police arrived there was no disturbance in progress save the singing of the glee club.
At Englewood High School, Chicago, the 208 members of the graduating class threatened to "walk out" unless Richard Dobbert, Lionel Sangor and Moses Weinstraub were permitted to receive their diplomas publicly without apologizing for a "snake dance" they had led. Crying, "I'll dictate the terms," Principal David M. Davidson was obdurate. He called the snake dance "disgracing the Class of February, 1927, and the school." But the 208 stood by their snake-dancing triumvirate, obliged Principal Davidson to be content with an explanation and compromise apology signed by the class officers.
At Barringer High School, Newark (N. J.), president and honor man of the graduating class was Arthur L. Voorhees, blind from birth. Newsgatherers discovered he got about the streets without a cane or whistle; that he had built five radio sets, without ever having read a radio textbook. Said he: "I can do just about anything other fellows do--except play football or things like that. I go to dances all the time and recognize the girls I'm going to cut in on by the tone of their voices or the particular perfume they use. . . . I'm just like any one else."
Principal H. H. Cully of Glenville High School, Cleveland, arose to address his graduating class and their parents. Great was the latters' dismay when, as they awaited breathless to hear their children lauded as Splendid Examples of Young American Womanhood & Manhood, Principal Cully harshly, sarcastically denounced the entire class as a "scholastic failure," more than hinting that none deserved diplomas. Irate, one C. L. Simpson, citizen, wrote to a local newspaper that for at least twelve years Principal Cully (21% years at his post) had "handed" each Glenville graduating class, instead of a bouquet a "generous dose of satirical scoring." Citizen Simpson suggested a new type of speech for Mr. Cully: "People, I am incompetent."
Coincidence
Jumpers-at-conclusions said excitedly: "That's what comes of reading pessimistic philosophers. Education is being overdone."
Scaremongers whispered: "It's a wave, sweeping the colleges. . . . A club . . . the members make solemn compact."
Perhaps there was more in it than met the eye, but most people set the grim facts down to coincidence. "Explanations" by learned psychologists held little water beyond the obvious likelihood that one man's suicide might arrest the attention of another man who had contemplated suicide for himself.
The facts which seemed to some people a significant sequence were these:
1) In Aurora, Ill., on Jan. 2, Joseph N. Moore, 21, sophomore at the University of Illinois, wrote on a piece of paper, "I have experienced everything life has to offer, so I will try death," and killed himself with a revolver.
2) In Manhattan, also on Jan. 2, Rigby Wile, 16, sophomore at the University of Rochester, wrote on a piece of paper that life was "meaningless . . . futile," and killed himself with a rifle.
3) In Chicago, on Jan. 18, Garvey Jones, 26, medical student, wrote a letter to the girl who had refused to marry him, killed himself with a revolver.
4) In Madison, Wis., on Jan. 24, Walter Cassels Noe, premedical student at the University of Wisconsin, with whom Sophomore Moore (No. 1 above) had dined on New Year's Day, wrote on a piece of paper that he wanted to "find out how things are over there," and killed himself with a revolver. Members of his fraternity (Delta Kappa Epsilon) sat up two nights waiting in vain for a spirit message. Student Noe had promised: "I'll be back at midnight."
5) In New Haven, Conn., on Jan. 26, Richard Starr Untermeyer, 20, Yale sophomore, son of Poet-Critic Louis Untermeyer, read a letter from his mother (Poetess Jean Starr Untermeyer) deploring the repeated overdraft of his bank balance and teling him he must improve or leave college--and hanged himself.
6) In Ann Arbor, Mich., on Jan. 27, Henry R. Kasson, 22, junior in the University of Michigan, who had lately suffered concussion of the brain in a motor smash, wrote out a check and a letter (explaining nothing) for his roommate, opened his copy of Dante's Inferno, drank acid and died.
"Inadvisable"
Louisiana State University (and Agricultural and Mechanical College), at Baton Rouge, La., in search of a president, singled out Major Campbell Blackshear Hodges, commandant of cadets* at West Point. Though the university is coeducational, this choice was not unusual, nor need foes of military training in the colleges have become excited. Louisiana State has long had a cadet corps. In 1911 Major Hodges commanded it, teaching Spanish at the same time. He is well-known in the state, having organized its militia (1915-17). Square-cut, with steel-grey hair and large brown eyes, he would doubtless be a president as popular with female undergraduates as with the cadets, whom he was to instruct in military science and tactics, in order to combine active service with the presidency.
But last week the War Department found it "inadvisable" to detail Major Hodges as a professor of warfare at Louisiana State. And not for two years will he round out the 30-year service that makes U. S. Army officers eligible for retirement by request.
Memorials
If you want to go to Heaven
When your time on earth is through,
You must be as Mr. Bryan--
You will fail unless you do.
--SOUTHERN HILLFOLKSONG.
Not by wind alone do disciples of the late William Jennings Bryan propose to keep his memory green. Ever since the "trumpet blast" that was "sounded for rallying the believing hosts of the world around their faith," i.e. the Scopes anti-evolution trial (precipitated by anti- Fundamentalists)--ever since the Great Commoner died "on the battlefield" (Dayton, Tenn.), hard-headed men have been promoting a Bryan Memorial University (TIME, Sept. 14, 1925). On a 26-acre tract across the road from the house in which Mr. Bryan breathed his last, this "sacred enterprise" is already under construction. It may be ready for 400 students next autumn.
F. E. Robinson, up-and-doing Dayton druggist, in whose historic store the Scopes trial crowds spent much time and money, is president of the Bryan Memorial University Association. And in Manhattan, last week, newsgatherers discovered one of many local "drives" that are to be held to raise $5,000,000. The quota assigned to New York City was modest in proportion to its size and wealth-$100 each from only 4,000 Fundamentalists. But the Bryanites were sure the metropolis must harbor at least that many. A Brooklyn undertaker and three clergymen were the first assistants engaged by one Malcolm M. Lockhart, onetime solicitor for the Near East Relief, who now styled himself "militant Fundamentalist" and headed the Manhattan drive. Driver Lockhart was prepared to issue certificates, each carrying a vote on the university's board of directors, to anyone with $100. He emphatically denied that he or his assistants, like solicitors for the Supreme Kingdom (TIME, Jan. 17), would receive commissions for each certificate sold, admitting only that they were on salaries which would fluctuate according to results obtained. He let newsgatherers see the neatly alliterated slogan of his organization: "Fifty Thousand Fundamentalists for the Faith of our Fathers."
Meantime Lincoln Memorial University, near the junction of Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia, an institution founded in 1897 without any "trumpet blast" but with a quiet, non-sectarian religious purpose and with the idea of carrying to four and one half million Appalachian mountaineers some of the enlightenment for which Abraham Lincoln, wilderness boy, so hankered--Lincoln Memorial University issued a dignified statement to the public that it needed a million dollars to go on with its work. To describe the handicaps it was working under with inadequate buildings and endowment, it quoted a most Lincolnian remark addressed to it by its good friend, Publisher Adolph S. Ochs of the New York Times. Mr. Ochs had said: "You are boring with a gimlet when you should be using an augur."
*For footnote, see col. 2. *To TIME'S Education Editor a thoroughgoing reprimand for omitting from a tabulation of the Transcript's "ten largest enrollments" (TIME, Jan. 24), the largest one of all. The corrected list:
1) New York University 18,199
2) University of California 17,101
3) Columbia 12,643
4) University of Illinois 11,810
5) University of Minnesota 10,796
6) University of Michigan 9,587
7) Ohio State University 9,377
8) University of Wisconsin 8,220
9) University of Pennsylvania.. 8,118
10) Harvard University 7,993
*Discipline officer; drillmaster. West Point's chief executive and ranking officer is a Superintendent; at present, Brigadier General March B. Stewart.