HEREIN SOME REMARKS A.RE WELL ANSWERED

The following series of letters and some comments on them by Mr. Harlan R. Ratcliffe, is reprinted from the Boston Evening Transcript, of December 29, with the knowledge that alumni will thereby be provided with enjoyable material to read and contemplate.

On College Fences

J. J. R. of M. I. T. having kindly called them to our attention, we will reprint herein an editorial entitled "Snappy College Publicity," from the Chrisrian Register, and a letter to the editor of this publication, which comes off Beacon Hill, from the pen of Lewis Parkhurst, of Winchester, member of the board of trustees of Dartmouth for 18 years.

Says The Register: What rules the colleges? Not the churches, nor the alumni, nor the students, nor athletics, nor the interests. None of these. The publicity megaphone rules the colleges. Do we exaggerate? It may be, a little. We think it is time to check up on the new phenomenon and the presidents that they are being led into a period of exploitation which may put them on the first page without commensurate distinction or permanent benefit for their respective institutions.

When this idea took root that a college president must say something snappy and put his college ovfer with a bang of type, no man knows. Tt was not long ago. We sometimes suspect that it originated in its present potency in Hanover, N. H. They saj' Dartmouth is the "best presj-agented school in the country." At any rate, Ernest M. Hopkins, a gifted leader, manages to keep out front, and in the center, and in some newspaper offices he is a darling. But does it help Dartmouth in the dignified and highly serious problems of education? Would more assiduous collaboration on the academic problems and less press notices for the publicity man's album be good advice for colleges in general? We have observed with some misgiving

the recent melo-rhetoric things actually printed as from Glenn Frank, head of Wisconsin, and they do not appeal to us at all. Dr. Clarence C Little, recently inducted into Michigan, whom we have praised highly, has been coached, one might almost suspect if one did not know him, in the kind of staccato metaphors that stick up in a headline and make a story with a punch. The new president of Lawrence College, Henry M. Wriston, spoke the other day by the press in a manner much more epigrammatic than academic. They all get the same style. So we might name President McConaughy of Wesleyan University, a clever and probably wise man. The heads of Harvard Yale and Princeton, Doctois Lowell, Angell and Hibben, have been making similar contributions to the new literature of university publicity.

We make no exhaustive anatomy of the college presidents' productions. We do not believe they are capable of consistently saying things that are at once clever and sound. Very rarely and always by inspiration rather than by studying the psychology of the newspaper's crowd, a man may speak memorably. The best work in the world does not lend itself to such high-powedescription as will win the lusty approbation of the multitude. Since the colleges are all saying they have more students than they can teach, there is another good reason why their presidents might go into cloistered retreat, reserving their outgivings for the pews after a great idea is born and put in operation. That would be news, and news rather than opinion is the real justification for the publicity department.

Responds Mr. Parkhurst, addressing the editor of The Register:

In your issue of December 3, under the editorial caption, "Snappy College Publicity," you ask the question, "What rules the colleges?" and you proceed to answer by saying '"The publicity megaphone rules the colleges" and instance Dartmouth as probably the most glaring example of this kind of management and refer somewhat disparagingly to President Hopkins as the "darling of some newspaper offices."

With reference to the management of the college, its policies are determmined and carried out by a board of 12 trustees, of whom Mr. Hopkins is the chairman. This board is advised and assisted by a council consisting of 25 members selected with considerable care by the alumni from their own number from all parts of the United States. I have been a member of that board of trustees for 18 years and have attended every one of its meetings during that time except two. I may then, in your opinion, be fairly regarded as competent to speak of its purposes and its ideals, and therefore justified in expressing the resentment I feel toward the implications of 3nDur editorial.

You offer a qualified apology for the editorial in stating that maybe you have exaggerated the situation a little. This leaves me at a loss to understand the real purpose of an unwarranted criticism of this character. Surely you would not be deliberately malicious or intentionally misrepresent as has been done in this case. To stoop to journalism at its worst would be unworthy of you. Maybe the explanation lies in the necessity under which even an editor of a religious weekly may labor from time to time, of challenging the attention of his readers by saying, and I adopt your own words, something ''snappy"—something that may possibly "go over with a bang"—a weakness which you ascribe to college presidents.

You say, "Would more assiduous collaboration on the academic problems and less press notices for the publicity man's album be good advice for colleges in general?" As a single example of collaboration, among many that I might mention, I will cite this instance. Professor Leon B. Richardson, a member of the Dartmouth faculty, was given a leave of absence in the year 1923-24 to visit leading colleges and universities in this country and in England, and the result of his conferences with the managements of these institutions, some 30, or more in all, the college published in a volume of about 300 pages entitled "A Study of the Liberal College" and distributed the volume among the leading colleges of the land. I am pleased to send a copy of this to you. You may, indeed, find it worthy of editorial comment.

Ex wno disce omnia.

Says The Register, in rebuttal: The reader of this letter will miss the point if he does not read (or reread) the editorial. The main proposition was not about Dartmouth, but that the press agent of the American college has too much swath. We merely cited Dartmouth as probably the original example. We named seven other examples.

Surely, among college executives throughout the land, as the editor knows positively from, first hand and authentic sources (including some Dartmouth men), Dartmouth is regarded as "the best press-agented school in the country." At any rate, in publicity. We believe in Dartmouth. But it is one of many colleges whose presidents are now suffering from staccato epigrammatis. This is an American infection, a part of the Babbittry of bigger and better boosting. We do not like it. We spoke of President Hopkins as a "gifted leader." He is. But he is, as others are, we feel, exploited by college press agents who want to "get over" a story and keep the executives "out in front" more than they seek to serve the higher cause of education. And it is true all over the country.

We agree that Dartmouth's ideals are all right. We spoke strictly about its press-agenting, and the press-agenting of many other schools, which we think is not right but wrong. We used the press agent's own language in showing our objection, and we are glad Mr. Parkhurst quoted it. In doing so he emphasized its offensiveness and the offensiveness of the whole loud brood of explosive and pyrotechnical nomenclature that has passed from the sporting page's record of the pugilistic arena and the playing field to the shades of academic council and learning.

We are grateful to Mr. Parkhurst for the book. We shall read it. That,, however, is another story. It is worthy of all praise. We ,have considered at length the reactions of certain Dartmouth men to Professor Richardson, and there is a healthy difference of opinion about what is the right course for Dartmouth. But there can be no question of the great value of the book to the cause .of education. All of which —the foregoing—is another hand-out of freely bestowed publicity to the college, whose sons are all ever ready and eager to glorify Alma Mater.

To make a long story short, we side with Mr. Parkhurst in this (at least to us) exceedingly interesting controversy and we suppose our siding will furnish the editor of the Christian Register with more grounds than ever for his belief that the colleges are over press-agented. For, he will no doubt say, why shouldn't a newspaper man be in favor of any scheme which will bring more and better news to the paper of which he is a humble yet intensely loyal servant. But there is a weak link in the Register's chain. So far as we have been able to determine, Dartmouth has no such publicity agent, official or unofficial, paid or unpaid, as the Register believes existent. And surely the Transcript, which is the only paper in New England publishing, as a daily feature, a School and College page, would know if such an official, or agent, existed. There is, at Hanover, a minor official who, we are told, supervises, very superficially, the undergraduate correspondents. But he falls far short of the picture the Register paints. Harvard, Yale, Boston University, Columbia and many other institutions of higher learning in the East, both for men and for women maintain offices, presided over by publicity directors, press agents, secretaries of information, or anything else you may wish to call them. How,ever dissimilar their titles, their functions are similar. They are all paid to put all the news of the university before the public and efficiently do they serve—both the institutions which hire them and the institutions which welcome their contributions.

Dartmouth has none of these. With very few exceptions all the news emanating from the hills of Hanover in the course of an academic year, comes from the "mill" of an undergraduate correspondent, who is paid by the newspaper and not by the college, wjho is appointed by the newspaper and not by the college, and whose activity in this extra-curricular work is supervised rigidly by an editor ISO or more miles away, and only casually by an administrative officer on the campus. With the exception of President Hopkins' opening address each September and an advance abstract of Professor Richardson's report, mentioned above, it is extremely difficult to recollect a single letter, other than personal missives, sent to this paper from the little town above White River, in the last three years. During that time, from Harvard, Yale, Boston University and Columbia has poured into this office enough material, we will hazard the guess, to fill to the brim an eight section Saturday edition of the Transcript. And the Transcript, to quote one of its readers, is "quite a paper on Saturday." Is this efficient publicity from Dartmouth? Is the college at Hanover laying too much stress on securing front-page space? The answer to both questions is no.

Certainly President Hopkins is not being "led into a period of exploitation," as the Register expresses it. He doesn't care very much, apparently, whether he "makes" the front page or not. If he did he would have sent to the press copies of all his addresses, would he not? Isn't the fact that in some newspaper offices "he is a darling due as much as to anything else to the fact that very often he has something to say? We think it is.

As for Glen Frank and Dr. Little, neither has been very much in the news. Dr. Little figured ten days ago because he and the students at Michigan were deciding, not without a preliminary skirmish, how best to wage war against drinking in Ann Arbor's fraternity houses. But we know Dr. Little too well to think that he took up this matter with the hope or expectation that the papers would take note of it. Presidents McConaughy, Lowell, Angell and Hibben, the Christian Register to the contrary notwithstanding, figure, year in and year out, very little in the day's news, except through the publishing of very limited extracts from their annual reports. As for the Register's belief that "we do riot believe they (college presidents) are capable of consistently saying things that are at once clever and sound," we will go one better and say that there are some college presidents who never say "things that are at once clever and sound."

In his rebuttal, as we please to call it, the Register's editor declares that Dartmouth "is one of many colleges whose presidents are now suffering from staccato epigrammatis." The question may be asked: "Why has Dartmouth had so much space in metropolitan papers in the last two or three years?" There are several reasons: Hawley produced the winner of this year's Eastern football championship; Professor Richardson conducted his excellent survey; Dartmouth was one of the first if not the first college to make a big thing of the selective system; the one and only important intercollegiate winter sports carnival ever held has become one of the bright spots in the Hanover calendar; the undergraduate body has grown by leaps and bounds; the coffers of the college have been swelled and its plant made more adequate through gifts, wisely and generously presented and expended; more of the college's graduates have joined the list of great successes; in baseball and hockey, in addition to football, the Big Green has demonstrated its ability to hold its own with the greatest of its Eastern contempararies. Dartmouth has "come fast"; in the last four years it 'has staged a great sprint; it has few enemies and boasts a host of friends; its policies have been tried and proven, its traditions tested and found true. We are not surprised that much attention has been paid in the newspapers to this college in New Hampshire's hills. We would only be surprised had its doings been ignored.

As for the other colleges, we doubt very much if too much attention is being paid to the putting of their news before a public which includes college graduates in everincreasing numbers. More and more space in metropolitan newspapers is being devoted to the affairs of the educational world. Editors welcome collegiate news. Why? Because the public is more and more interested in campus affairs. Very little of the material sent out is unacceptable; very little of it is detrimental to the best interests of education as a whole; very little of it exploits college presidents.