Princeton's Problem

Princeton University, exemplar of educational democracy, last week found itself in the exciting position of one who must reaffirm, or retract, or redefine the policy underlying his conduct. For years Princeton has had an honor system and an undergraduate self-government body, composed of seniors. The honor system has functioned almost perfectly. Undergraduate responsibility has been demonstrated to a lesser degree by the senior council, the powers of which have fluctuated, without ever being very clearly defined, between the purely advisory and the actually administrative. The fluctuation has followed naturally from the changing strength of character in successive classes. Thus, in 1924 the council was so unrepresentative and therefore weak that it was obliged to resign. Last week, a council, full of conviction and therefor strong, resigned by its own choice to force the whole issue of Princeton self-government.

Automobiles had become a troublesome problem in Princeton, as elsewhere. Five undergraduate deaths, the poor scholastic standing of 200 student automobile owners and the threat to Princeton's traditional seclusion latent in roadsters capable of reaching bright-lit cities in two hours of the day or night, moved Dean Christian Gauss to ask the senior council to pass a prohibitive ruling. He asked twice. The council took no action. It had passed a rule last spring requiring parental permission for student motors. Cars were not allowed to enter the campus. The council believed that was sufficient prohibition. Dean Gauss went to the university trustees and the prohibition was soon published, a university rule to go into effect next autumn. The senior council tendered, not to the senior class, which had elected it, but to the whole student body, a resignation which said:

". . . The status of student self-government at Princeton appears to us indeterminate. . . . We wish it to be clear that we are expressing neither objection nor approval regarding the act [prohibiting cars] of the Board of Trustees...."

Chairman Joseph Prendergast of the council later added: "We feel that under the present system the senior council is allowed to pass rulings so long as they fit in with the administration plans."

The students' next move was to hold a referendum in which they voted to replace the senior council with a student council drawn from all four undergraduate classes, with "independent" legislative, executive and judicial powers. While the university officials pondered this proposition, students substituted roller skates for balloon tires and hung placards on their backs: "My Gauss is cooked," "Mama said I Could," "See You at the Follies." The undergraduate Daily Princetonian published its annual burlesque edition in pinko-tabloid form, with a composite picture in the Bernarr Macfadden manner and the caption: "GAUSS'S SHAME." To the Princeton administration, the question of motor cars was negligible compared to its task of distinguishing between good undergraduate theorizing and practical undergraduate discipline. A finer distinction to be made was between the "intellectual self-determinism" Princeton is trying to inculcate in scholastic matters, and self-deterministic undergraduate self-government. While it would obviously be logical, would it be possible or advisable to permit the students to decide for themselves whether they would drive cars, at the same time as they were being encouraged to decide for themselves whether they should read Jonathan Edwards or Tom Paine?