Harvard v. Yale

A majority of the newspapers twitted it. Said the New York World: "The rival coaches assert the brains of their champions are in the pink of condition."

A majority of the professors of English Literature, fearful lest their pupils disgrace themselves, deplored it. Said one Yale professor: "I have troubles enough without letting the public gape at the results of my lectures." Said another Harvard professor: "It may not do any harm, but I do not approve of it."

Yet it was run off on schedule--the brain battle between undergraduates of Harvard and Yale Universities. For three hours, one afternoon last week, a picked team of ten Yale seniors wrote answers to the regular examination paper which was given to all Harvard seniors specializing in English. They were not allowed to help each other, but the smoking of cigarets was permitted. They sat in old Connecticut Hall, where Patriot Nathan Hale once roomed. On the Yale team were eight Phi Beta Kappa men, one dark horse and John Knox Jessup, campus wit, who last autumn wrote on his page in the Yale Alumni Weekly: "Harvard men cannot be said to aim at, for they essentially are, good form."

At the same time, in Cambridge, Mass., the team of ten Harvard seniors answered the same examination paper (in next year's tilt a Yale paper will be given to both teams). The Harvard men did their writing in a classroom along with 140 other students. The same rules applied, except that the Harvard team was not allowed to smoke. Seven members held scholarships; one, Richard T. Sherman of Algona, Iowa, had been editorial chairman of the Harvard Crimson; another, Henry T. Dolan, suffering a fractured kneecap, took his examination in a hospital.

The examination was thoroughly academic, covering English literature from the earliest Anglo-Saxon poetry down to Thomas Hardy, with only a few questions on William Shakespeare or the late 19th century writers. One question was to "show by an analysis of the content, style or diction of three of the following passages in what ways they are characteristic of their authors or of the times in which they were written." The passages were taken from William Langland, Edmund Spenser, Samuel Johnson, Charles Lamb, Lord Byron.

The papers of both teams were turned over to two Princeton professors and one Cornell professor for marking. The determination of the winning team was awaited eagerly, but not boisterously, at Cambridge and New Haven.

This, the first annual brain joust between Harvard and Yale tens, was the result of a $125,000 gift of Mrs. William Lowell Putnam, sister of President Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard. The gift provides a prize of $5,000 worth of books each year to the winning team.

If Harvard should win, Yale has an obvious alibi. Harvard employs seven Full Professors to teach English to undergraduates; Yale has only five.