Report Card

P: Cornell had a distinguished visitor last week--Oxford University Don David Butler, who calls himself the world's first psephologist. That, says he, is a man who specializes in the study of elections; the word comes from the Greek for pebble ("You know how they used to hold their elections by dropping pebbles in a box"). Psephologist Butler admitted that the coinage was a joke, "but for all I know, the word may some day catch on."

P: After studying the origins of more than 650 colleges and universities, Professor Albert Reiser tells in a new book (College Names; Bookman Associates, $3) just what sorts of people get immortalized in the names of campuses. Top scorers: saints, bishops and religious leaders (250), benefactors (150), statesmen and sovereigns (50). Among the least likely to succeed: writers, with only two (Poet Laurence Dunbar and Novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe).

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