Trouble in Texas

The Texas House of Representatives last week found some of George Gordon, Lord Byron's writings "not fit to be read by any person within or without the University [of Texas]." The House resolved to investigate the $20,000 purchase, for the university's noted rare-book collection, of early editions of Byron, Browning, Lamb, Shelley, Tennyson and Petronius Arbiter. All the House charged, were "obscene" or "atheistic."

More than a simple outcropping of Grundyism, this was the latest engage ment in an unending conflict between the Austin Legislature and the university, whose tower looks down on the State Capitol. The fact that the university has grown to be one of the four leading Southern institutions,* a big-time contributor of men, training and research to the U.S. war effort (TIME, Nov. 30), has not appeased the legislators. Many Texans find the Austin students effete: to the Aggies (Texas A. & M. College), for example, many strapping Austin characters are "tea-sippers." And the war between the politicos and the professors goes on.

Some 1943 battles:

> J. Frank Dobie, professor of literature, rancher, glorifier of the open range, accepted an invitation to Cambridge University, announced he would "explain homemade Fascism" to the English, gave as an example "John Lee Smith, Lieutenant-Governor of Texas [and] Laborbaiter." Replied Smith: "The shipping space . . . could be better used by shipping some good Texas beefsteak which English stomachs would relish better than English brains will digest the mental slumgullion which Dobie has for them."

> A student referendum showed 89% favoring a compulsory $1 fee to support the student-activities building. Students packed the galleries, but the House of Representatives refused to pass the compulsory fee.

> The Senate put a rider on the appropriations bill preventing any university from having a public-relations agent.

> The Legislature called for censorship after pretty, 19-year-old Sue Brandt, in an editorial in the Daily Texan, approved Soviet criticism of the Czarist Church.

*The others: Duke, North Carolina, Virginia.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.