Strike

Have students the right to strike? Disapproving of the dictates of their pastors and masters, may pupils push aside their books and declare, as a body, that they will cease to be pupils until the pastors and masters meet their demands ?

For five days last week, the trustees of Clemson College (near Spartanburg, S. C.) deliberated thus. The particular case they had to decide was modified from the question in general by the fact that Clemson is a military college, with explicit regulations on "desertion" and "deliberations or discussions among cadets." The Clemson case :

R. F. Holohan, senior class President, football player, "most popular cadet," was dismissed by the authorities on a charge of drinking intoxicating fluids. Already having certain "grievances" about the mess hall (allegedly suspicious-looking "wieners," chicken "unfit for food") some 250 of the 1,100 cadets signified their pain over Holohan's sentence by leaving the campus. Clemson alumni pleaded with the "strikers" to take their case before the trustees, as provided in the regulations; and though many of the students were obdurate, others yielded, held a meeting, formed a student committee, submitted petitions.

The Clemson trustees settled their case by dismissing 23 Seniors, suspending 108 Juniors and four Seniors for the balance of this year. Other insurgents were sentenced to penal marching and deprived of privileges. To an interested outside world, these sentences, in the light of Clemson's disciplinary regulations, appeared just.