Report Card

P:In Manhattan, Lawyer Allen Murray Myers, who declared that he would rather "rot in jail" than send his nine-year-old daughter to the overcrowded, dilapidated, 95-year-old Public School 19 (TIME, Jan. 19), won his battle against the board of education. Since Myers' wife is a licensed teacher, ruled a domestic relations court judge, "the purpose of the compulsory education law has . . . been satisfactorily met . . . The freedom of parents is safeguarded so long as they meet their responsibility as parents."

P:The editors of Latinitas, the first international Latin quarterly (TIME, Feb. 16), announced that in spite of the difficult Ciceronian prose of their first issue, nearly 450 people from the U.S. had written in for subscriptions. Some customers had even written in Latin, though the editors admitted that it was rather "approximate."

P:Fed up with the clumsy conjunction "and/or" that was forever popping up in legal documents, the Georgia state house of representatives turned lexicographer for a moment and solemnly invented a substitute, "andor.'' But would the new word stick? Commented Lexicographer Wilfred Funk: "A deliberative body cannot legislate into existence a new word. Words live or die according to how they are accepted. I do not think 'andor' can live."

P:The student council of the Union High School in Redwood City, Calif, formally banished girls from a field they had come to dominate: cheer leading. Reasons: 1) girls don't have the authority to control rooters; 2) girls don't know enough about the subtleties of sport to know when to lead a cheer; 3) girls are too shrill; and 4) the boys want to get into the act.

P:Yale announced that its gifts since June had hit a new high: $15 million.

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