Winter Queen

McGill University students take the election of their winter carnival queen with deadly seriousness. Last year there were charges that the vote was rigged. This year the student council adopted a foolproof ballot system and appointed dependable poll watchers.

Nominations for the most beautiful, poised and personable coed on the Montreal campus drew 26 names. After a series of interviews, the council narrowed the field to five, assigned a campaign manager to each for the traditional politicking.

Most enterprising campaign manager was Dunbar Rapier, a Negro third-year premedical student, whose candidate was Beryl Dickinson-Dash, 21-year-old daughter of a Montreal railway porter. Rapier posed Beryl before the snow sculpture decorating the campus for carnival week, then tacked the photographs all over the campus. He persuaded Montreal radio shows to get in a word for his candidate.

At week's end, when Montreal's Mayor Camellien Houde puffed up to McGill for the carnival ball, he put the crown on Beryl Dickinson-Dash's head. In the voting by McGill's 8,500 students (150 of them Negroes), Beryl had posted a decisive margin. The student council gave out no figures ("It might injure the other girls"), but it was satisfied with the election result. McGill's students, untroubled by any race problem, had merely voted for a popular and attractive girl, regardless of the color of her skin.

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