Cunning Gauss

At the dean's desk in Nassau Hall, Princeton University, sits a slightly bald, slightly stooped, slow- spoken gentleman whose grey eye twinkles at a witticism in the French literature he knows so thoroughly, quite as often as his firm lip stiffens to pronounce upon matters of policy and discipline--Dean Christian Gauss.

Lately his twin daughters were elected to help transport the Vassar College daisy chain. Lately, too, authorized by the Princeton trustees, he forbade the young men of Princeton to keep automobiles at college (TIME, March 14).

Popular though his daughters may be, Dean Gauss became at once unpopular. The motor-loving young men of Princeton baited him by all means--by roller-skating noisily, by driving horse-and-buggies, by wearing placards. The Princetonian (campus daily) headlined in its burlesque issue: "GAUSS'S SHAME." A senior, George Lambert, sporting scion of Listerine (mouth wash, etc.), inspired university admiration by bringing to town an airplane and droning over the campus in it. Airplanes were not mentioned in the Gaussian edict against motor vehicles.

More airplanes came to Princeton and droned above the elms. Dean Gauss said nothing. Students paid $3 apiece for five-minute rides in commercial craft, just to fly over Nassau Hall and snap their fingers. Dean Gauss said nothing. Everyone felt sure that Dean Gauss would enunciate a new prohibition, but Dean Gauss said nothing--until last week, when he unexpectedly proclaimed an interpretation of his anti-motor vehicle edict which the laziest of campus sag-spines had to admit partook of Solomonic cunning. "We have so many machines on the ground," Dean Gauss began blandly, "that we do not bother particularly about those up in the air, as a fleet of pursuit planes would be needed for effective control. . . . Anyone may fly over Princeton--but if he lands here, and runs along the ground, we shall class his plane as a motor vehicle and return him and it to his parents."

At Virginia

The University of Virginia, fathered by that potent political philosopher, Thomas Jefferson, announced the foundation of an Institute of Public Affairs. Like the already famed Williamstpwn Institute of Politics, the Virginia Institute will meet each August to study and discuss governmental problems and the social and economic questions underlying them. Unlike the Williamstown Institute, the new body will concentrate on issues that immediately confront U. S. citizens.

Many a stalwart educator, journalist, statesman will advise and guide the Virginia venture, among them Governors Byrd of Virginia and Ritchie of Maryland, Presidents Butler of Columbia University and Chase of the University of North Carolina, Senators Couzens of Michigan and Glass of Virginia, Editors Freeman of the Richmond News-Leader and Fishburne of the Roanoke Times; and Viscountess Astor, British M. P., vivacious daughter of the old Virginia aristocracy.

Seminarians

In a shack in the woods near Syracuse, N. Y., students of Cazenovia Seminary smoked in furtive privacy. Last week, startled, they learned that Student Theodore Kensicki, 17-year-old aspirant to the ministry, was about to "squeal" on them. Eight of the smokers lured Student Kensicki with soft words to a lonely spot. While he kicked, lunged, writhed, they tore off his clothes, scrubbed his skin raw and. bleeding with a wire brush. Into his sorry scratches they then rubbed iodine. They left Student Kensicki screaming with pain, minus five teeth. Soon they left the seminary, suspended by the president's order.

Britons Vexed

Last week a not altogether dignified chorus of disappointment and disapproval rose from within the walls of English universities. London University, which enrolls 3,000 students in the world's most imposing school of economics, had needed a man for its .top economics ; chair. The, school's director and governors had 'called from the U.S. able Economist Allyn Abbott Young of Harvard. While Britons grumbled and groused, Director Sir William Beveridge anything but mollified public opinion by admitting frankly that Britain had no suitable candidate. Sir Josiah Stamp, one of the governors, stoutly maintained: "I do not think we could have filled the vacancy any other way. We wanted the right type of man. . . ."

An Ohioan aged 50, Professor Young, taught at Wisconsin, Western Reserve, Dartmouth, Stanford, Washington Univ., Cornell, before going, in 1920, to Harvard. In War-time he directed the War Trade Board research bureau.

What is Wrong

Those super-Oliver Twists, U. S. universities, are holding out their hands for more. Yale University lately began a campaign for $20,000,000. Columbia University hopes to raise $60,000,000. Every other college and university is ready to take as much as it can get. Most of these millions are wanted to buy more and better teachers.

Last week, while the universities beat torn toms to stir up their alumni, mildly, preciously intellectual Vanity Fair and the brusque, factitious American Mercury, told what lacks and is wrong in U. S. higher education.

In Vanity Fair, David Gray, novelist-protege of Editor Frank Crowninshield, Anglophile, told universities in general and philanthropists in particular that to hasten "America's intellectual Golden Age," what lacks is the Oxonian tinge. He said: "All Souls college at Oxford . . . is an exclusive club of intellectual swells, picked graduates of other colleges who live, at the expense of the foundation, in a kind of divine idleness

At the appointed time, those who have the call to teach descend from their citadel. ... An All Souls in every American university . . . might conceivably change the course of American civilization for the better."

In the brass-lunged American Mercury, one T. N. Gillespie, laid out all specialized pedagogy for a thorough flogging. He flogged Deans of Education as representing "the very bottom of American academic ability," the Teachers College at Columbia University as an "up and doing cultural behemoth" with a stock of 37 "pedagogical staples."

Author Gillespie wordily ridiculed self-analysis tests, degree-of-truth tests, intelligence tests, vocational selection tests, by which the teacher "can, without sweating too much, classify his students into prospective Baptist divines, bottleggers, radio announcers and Y. M. C. A. secretaries." He saved a special flaying for courses in the outlying teacher colleges on "Dress Appreciation," "Beef Operations," "Scoutcraft," "Clay Modeling." He cheerfully summarized: "Modern pedagogy . . . has degenerated into a dull and dangerous cripple with nothing save oblivion for its future."