Rochester Roundup

The University of Rochester does not have to worry about money. The generosity of Kodakman George Eastman, of many another proud, rich citizen who participated in a whirlwind fund-raising campaign in 1924, left it with $33,000,000 in buildings and equipment, a $51,000,000 endowment that ranks fifth in the U. S. The University of Rochester does not have to worry about the quality of its president, able, young, onetime Rhodes Scholar Alan Chester Valentine, imported from Yale four months ago (TIME, Nov. 25). The University of Rochester does not have to worry about the brainpower of its faculty, which includes venerable Geologist Herman Le Roy Fairchild; able young Physicist Lee Alvin DuBridge; Historian Dexter Perkins. But last week the University of Rochester appeared to be deeply worried about the tone of its student body when it launched a nationwide search for 120 talented, attractive undergraduates.

Students from far & wide flock to Rochester's School of Medicine & Dentistry, headed by Nobel-Prizewinning Pathologist George Hoyt Whipple, and to Rochester's Eastman School of Music, whose Director is Composer Howard Hanson (Merry Mount). But of the College's 1,100 students, 75% come from within 50 mi. of Rochester, N. Y. More than half are day students who leave their starkly handsome Genesee River campus at 4 p. m. like factory hands at the end of a day's shift. Alumni have groused about the absence of "college spirit," the lacklustre air of extracurricular activities, the football team which played seven games last season and lost six of them. On their part, Rochester teachers have complained that Rochester students tend to grind for marks, that a true national university should have in its college a diversified, representative student body.

Last week President Valentine prepared to spend some of Rochester's millions for undergraduates with plenty of personality. He offered 120 students of "definite intellectual promise" a $500 scholarship apiece, enough to cover tuition and residence in the college dormitories. To manage his roundup, President Valentine engaged Frederick Lawson Hovde, a fellow Rhodes Scholar, who will hold an appointment in the chemistry department, spend most of his time sounding preparatory school masters for material, interviewing scholarship candidates. An ardent pole-vaulter, All-Conference quarterback when he went to University of Minnesota in 1925-29, Frederick Hovde was the third U. S. citizen to win his "full blue" by playing rugby for Oxford against Cambridge. The second U. S. "full blue" is President Valentine. Before Frederick Hovde goes to Rochester from his present post at the University of Minnesota in September, President Valentine plans to supervise the selection of ten men, five women, to be experimentally admitted next term.

Explained President Valentine: "In their terms and objectives the Rochester Prize Scholarships may be compared . . . with the Rhodes Scholarships. No scholarship examination will be set ... but the Committee may ask candidates to take certain aptitude tests. ... In addition to intellectual abilities the Committee . . . will demand qualities of high character, industry and maturity of purpose. . . . The Rochester Prize Scholarships should enhance the cosmopolitan character of the student body and its mature and effective student leadership."

Wistfully echoed the College's Dean William Ernest Weld: "We hope to get replies from distant places."

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