At Wisconsin

"If I were president of this university, I would. . ." How many disgruntled professors have muttered thus in the privacy of their bed-chambers after a discouraging day!

"If "I were president of this university," said Professor Edward Alsworth Ross of the University of Wisconsin one day last week, but he was not muttering in his bedroom; he was talking straight out for publication, "If I were president of this university, and I am sure I should last about three months, I would eliminate the loafers if it took out 1,500. I would also eliminate the 'boozers,' the 'hipflask toters' and the fellows who think it's smart to violate the laws. When I got through there might not be more than 5,000 students here, but we might again have the atmosphere, earnestness and hard work which the university is said once to have had."

Professor Ross has known and served Wisconsin for 20 years. His field is sociology. He was talking at a time when he and his colleagues were engrossed with the correction of examination papers. Hundreds of dismissal slips were issuing from the offices of the deans. He felt he was not talking wildly but as a man of reason. It seemed clear to him that there were at least 1,000 black sheep scampering around the campus, leading astray at least 2,000 weakling sheep who might, in good company, be persuaded to study. "We could," he said, "save the people of this state $500,000 a year. . . ."

But Professor Ross is not, and is not likely to be, president of Wisconsin. He has twice (1914, 1915) been president of the American Sociological Society. He has written books, Honest Dollars, Sin and Society, Latter Day Sinners and Saints, The Russian Soviet Republic. But Wisconsin has a brand new president of whom it expects much, Dr. Glenn Frank, lately editor of the Century. And Dr. Frank is still on unfamiliar ground. He has been going cautiously, observingly; has been noncommittal in deed and statement, so far. He has said he is "willing to be reactionary as the Tsar of Russia on Monday, or as radical as Leon Trotzky on Tuesday," if facts warrant (TIME, Nov. 2). What facts lie behind Professor Ross' outcry he has yet to determine.