Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 72, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 December 1920 — GOVERNMENT SCHOOL OPENED [ARTICLE]

GOVERNMENT SCHOOL OPENED

At West Lafayette for Disabled Soldier* and Sailor* of World War. Indiana’s first government school for disabled soldiers and sailors of the World war was opened in West T afayattn Tuesday under the direction of the federal board of vocational education. Many applications for admission have been received and within two weeks It is expected to have from fifty to one hundred men at work in the school. The government leased the Oakwood school building in West Lafayette, and remodeled it into a modern vocational training-school. The building was so merly the West Side high school, but it was abandoned several years ago when a new high school was erected. Carl J. Dexter, who was graduated from Purdue university In 1911, has been made director of the school. Mr. Dexter was principal of the West Side high school when the United States entered the war against Germany* He went to a training camp and was commissioned an officer, serving through the war period. The teaching staff has not been selected. The school, which will accommodate 950, will offer both vocational training and elementary educational courses, leading up to college entrance. The government is already sending disabled former service men to universities If they are qualified for such work, but the new school in West Lafayette is designed for men who are not yet fitted for college entrance. Every entrant will be obliged to take the elementary educational work. Those who go to the school primarily for vocational training will be obliged to take at least half of their work in the general educational courses. Purdue university will cooperate with the new school by supplying Instructors and equipment for the agricultural training and other vocational branches. There are already forty-eight former service men enrolled at Purdue as “federal board” students. A large number of those who have applied for admission to the new school are married, and the problem of finding housing accommodations for them is proving difficult.