Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 March 1903 — ARE WE CIVILIZED? [ARTICLE]

ARE WE CIVILIZED?

Reforring editorially to the recent disgraceful class tight of the Purdue University students, the Lafayette Journal says: The battle of Columbia ball, fought March 11, 1903, in this city, is getting more notoriety than the magnitude and importance of the engagement warrants. According to reports sent out by war correspondents supposed to have on the ground when the action commenced and to have remained here until Colonel Harrison with a squad of seven policemen and a Btring of hose dispersed the crowd, there were 500 Freshmen in the attacking force and 200 Sophomores sitting in the citadel surrounding a Norway pine festal board waiting for coffee when the battering of|a battering ram was heard at the front door. Tko fact is that the entire force on both sides did not number 300, and only a third of the polioe was called out, and one hose-reel. But the affair was bad enough and less activity on the part of tho police would have made it worse. Officer Powell is entitled to the banner for scalps secured, he having more to his credit than any other man. The public cares not much for tho details of this highly disgraceful nffair. It is only concern d in tho ouo fact that it happened. The sober minded citizen is wondering what we are coming to, and whether after robbing tho noble red man of his rightful possessions in America, and driven most of him off of the earth, we propose to reinaugurate the institutions of savagery which he was forced to abandon, upon a more intellectual scale, and do things that the savage would have been ashamed of.