Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 75, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 May 1907 — SHCOOLS AND COLLEGES [ARTICLE]

SHCOOLS AND COLLEGES

Robert H. Baker, formerly of the Amherst faculty, is assistant astronomer of the Allegheny observatory at the age of 23. Francois Coppee has given the Academic Francais a sum yielding S2OO biennially for use as a prize for young poets. Gov. Hughes of New York is claimed by the alumni of Cornell, Brown, Columbia and Colgate universities, he having been at times in those institutions. William H. Fisher of Baltimore has presented the University of Pennsylvania with an unusual collection of photographs of various species of snakes taken in their own habitat.

The Springfield, Mass., board of education has not only passed resolutions forbidding the official recognition of secret fraternities among students by teachers or school officers, but has defined this recognition to mean active or post graduate membershijp-in such fraternity or society, or the patronage of it in any other way. This will necessitate the resignation of nearly all the high school teachers, or severance of their connection with the societies.

The Playground Association of America will open on July 1 a model playground at The Jamestown exposition, containing' - only -home-made apparatus, that is. not patented, or such as can be duplicated by an ordinary carpenter at small expense. The playground will occupy 206 feet square, and will accommodate 600 children. The object is to show municipalities, particularly in the South, the advantage and economy of giving city children such opportunities for health and development. The apparatus will include such familiar devices as swings, see- . sawa, slides, ladders, sand piles, basket ball, volley ball, flying ring, bars, etc. Supplementing the out door exhibit there will be an indoor one, consisting of photographs of playgrounds in all cities which carry on such acth’ities, and data as to the cost of erection, maintenance, etc. There will also be moving pictures of playgrounds in operation, and a series of lectures by play experts. Chancellor Day of Syracuse university, addressing the New York Methodist conference, urged that the college presidents of the country get together on some plan of excluding all students who p.re known to use iutoxicating liquors or tobacco, or to indulge in vices. He said be would not mention names, but that they all knew of, the depraved conditions and the scenes of debauchery in many of our universities. He. for one, believed that the first responsibility was not to fulfill the scholastic requirements, but was to attend to the morals of the students. He would have it so that no immoral student could matriculate, and that if he liecame immoral after eptering college be should be dismissed. He told how in his own university students were made to feel that they signed their own dismissals when they entered a place of evil resort. He believes that one of the best ways of elevating the moral tone of college men is by introducing co-education, and says that in practice tfie influence of women srndents, who refuse to associate with men known to be intemperate or immoral, is found to have the very best results. It was recently announced that John IX Rockefeller had made an additional gift -of $2,000,000 to the university of Chicago, this gift taking the form of real estate, upon which it is designed to extend the institution. This makes the' total of Mr. Rockefeller’s contributions to the university over $23,000,000, of which $6,000,000 has been given within the past sixteen months. J Prof. William Lyon Phelps of Yale, in a recent lecture in Connecticut, declared that "Mark Twain Is easily the greatest American novelist in the history of this country’s literature.”