Privacy at Princeton

The Philadelphian Society, Princeton University's 105-year-old campus religious organization, conducts religious services and courses of study, engages in charity and mission work, offers membership and the opportunity for good deeds to any man on the campus. Privately it does admirable, devout things in a quiet, effective way. Publicly it has achieved quite a different reputation. Several years ago the Philadelphian Society got itself mixed up with the lurid cult of Buchmanism, which encourages its adherents, of both sexes, to achieve spiritual relief by blurting out their sex histories at weekend "house parties" (TIME, Oct. 18, 1926). This gave the society an unsavory reputation among many outsiders. To others it seemed ridiculous. Many an undergraduate and alumnus has spattered mud, flour, beer on the allegorically righteous bronze figure of the Christian Student, which stands across the road from Murray-Dodge Hall, small brownstone. neo-Gothic citadel of the society (TIME. Dec. 2). Two facetious undergraduates once conducted a campaign for the presidency and vice presidency of the organization which was so effective that it ended by unanimous consent in the office of genial Dean Christian Gauss.

But while some have looked on the Philadelphian Society with horror, some with amusement, some with complete apathy, almost every Princetonian has regarded it as weak. This judgment was echoed last week by the society itself. President Charles Stevens announced that next year it will lead only a nominal life, while a federation of studentry and faculty carries on its charitarian and other endeavors. Many Princetonians discerned behind this movement the energetic figure of Rev. Robert Russell Wicks, Dean of the University Chapel, who arrived at Princeton two years ago from the Second Church (Congregationalist) of Holyoke, Mass., determined that Princeton's religious life should be enlightened, vital. In his remarks many found several clues as to what religiously-minded Princeton-ians conceive to be the university's religious need.

Said he: "It is simply that all of us feel the need of a change. Like it or not, religion to a student is an intensely private affair and he hesitates to make public his inner attitudes. It is my private opinion that religious associations in college have not sufficiently recognized this normal religious reticence on the part of the majority of men. Fellowship in the more personal and intimate phases of religious experience should be kept for private, congenial groups, where sincerity can be protected from publicity. . . . Many men in college today are ready to offer their help, but hesitate to do so through the Philadelphian Society because of the inherited prejudice against setting one's self apart."

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