Penn Money

In Philadelphia's Convention Hall this week waiters laid two miles of tablecloths, carried in 28,000 dishes. While thousands of University of Pennsylvania men ate 75 other simultaneous "worldwide dinners," the 4,000 diners in Philadelphia, one of the largest groups of people ever to sit down to table in one place, proceeded pensively to consume two tons of meat and drink and some food for thought. It was distressing to Penn men to be reminded that their university, which boasts nine firsts* and over 15,000 students, ranks sixteenth in U. S. university endowments./- To alter this state of affairs, Penn's President Thomas Sovereign Gates was thereupon launching a drive for $12,500,000 more endowment.

Banker Gates, who had danced for the Mask & Wig Club as an undergraduate at the U. of P. (Class of 1893) and gone on to become one of Philadelphia's richest men, became bored with private banking in 1930, resigned as a partner in J. P. Morgan & Co. to seek "romance and high adventure" in running his old university, which he insisted on doing without pay. Soon he put Education on a business basis, balancing the budget by reducing expenses from $9,000,000 to $6,000,000 a year, projecting a 15-year money-raising program to replace the hand-to-mouth system of making the rounds of donors each year.

President Gates also gained attention for the university with the Gates plan for de-emphasizing varsity athletics (by employing only teacher-coaches and encouraging intramural sports), enforcement of a rule against drinking in fraternity houses, Penn sponsorship of the "Cultural Olympics" to pick the U. S. champions in music, arts & crafts, literature, drama, the dance.

Juiciest bait in President Gates's appeal for funds for a bigger and better University of Pennsylvania is a plan to build a small experimental college and athletic fields in Valley Forge, 22 miles from the noisy city campus on Walnut Street. To start with 50 freshmen, the tiny college I will instruct selected students by the tutorial method mainly in American history, government and English for a fee of about $1,250 a year. Other drive aims: strengthening the faculty, more money for research, more scholarships, new chemistry and library buildings, extension of the museum.

Since modern financing of Culture is an elaborate business, President Gates appointed as general drive chairman Philadelphia Banker Joseph Wayne Jr., as national alumni committee head Equitable Life's President Thomas Ignatius Parkinson. Then he hired the John Price Jones money-raising organization, which started a year ago approaching Penn's 55.000 alumni. By this week, when the campaign formally opened, $1,000,000 of the $12,500,000 had already been raised. To take three years, the drive is timed to culminate in the University's bicentennial celebration in 1940.

* Notably, first full-fledged university to be established in North America (though Harvard and William & Mary dispute this claim), first liberal college curriculum in the American colonies, first school of medicine, first university school of business.

/-Harvard: $135,000,000 Stanford: 31,000,000 Yale: 104,000,000 Johns Hopkins:

Columbia: 70,000,000 30,000,000 Chicago: 67,000,000 Princeton: 28,000,000 Rochester: 51,000,000 Northwestern:

Texas: 35,000,000 27,000,000 M.I.T.: 34,000,000 Vanderbilt: 23,000,000 Duke: 34,000,000 California: 22,000,000 Cornell: 32,000,000 Penn: 20,000,000

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