At Wisconsin

"We announced with fear and trembling that we would take 120 young men, if they came. We were afraid they would not come, because this was an experimental college. I could see youth throughout Wisconsin asking: 'Do I want to be experimented upon?' "

Alexander Meiklejohn made the above confession last autumn at the opening of the Experimental College of the University of Wisconsin, in the presence of the 119 students who had registered. They were not a selected group. They had come voluntarily because they wanted to spend their first two college years under Dr. Meiklejohn and as a part of his experiment. They had heard of him as a liberal who had been forced to resign from the presidency of Amherst College (in 1923). They knew that President Glenn Frank had brought him to Wisconsin because he was also a distinguished philosopher.

Last week, the students of the Experimental College issued a booklet telling all about the first year. It breathed enthusiasm: "minds set free," "intellectual success." Dr. Meiklejohn added a cautious note: "the College is too young to be judged." But, said he, "As a venture in friendship the College has succeeded beyond all question."

Studies. The entire year was devoted to a thorough investigation of Athens in the fifth century B. C.--the idea being that when a student masters one civilization he is able to deal intelligently with any civilization or any problem: Dr. Meiklejohn and eleven instructors gave the students a program of reading, conference, discussion, papers to be handed in. They read Plato, Aristotle and Euripides, as.well as occasional chunks of Shakespeare, Shaw, O'Neill. They sketched Greek temples. Art, law, war economics, religion--no phase of Athenian existence was omitted. The climax of the year was a critical review, written by each student, of a modern book called the Greek View of Life by G. Lowes Dickinson. A few outsiders, such as Irishman George Russell (AE), lectured.

Next year, the students will look into U. S. civilization. After that, they can take up the usual junior year undergraduate courses given by the University of Wisconsin leading to the B.A. degree. Meanwhile, a second batch of students will start in with Athens. The total enrollment of the Experimental College will not be allowed to exceed 250.

Life. The students of the Experimental College were segregated in one dormitory, but many of them engaged in campus athletics and extra-curriculum activities. They had their own dramatic club, which produced The Clouds of Aristophanes and Electro, of Euripides. Then, fraternizing their classical strides, the students adopted as the official uniform of the Experimental College a blue blazer with pearl grey trimming and with emblem of sacred Athenian owl. Many a Wisconsin's farmer's son twitted them for wearing it. The relations of the faculty and students were close--teas and chats being mentioned with enthusiasm. Some of the boys must have looked into Author Ernest Hemingway, for here is the way they describe members of the faculty in their booklet:

"That was the night we found his house. He came to the door; he was entertaining his group. Mrs. Agard [his wife] found room for us; we had seats. A small fire was still burning, and there were cakes; and Mrs. Agard offered us a choice of tea, coffee or chocolate. But we stayed behind after the group had gone. He read us some poetry. He selected the book from the table next to the couch. He sat on the couch, in the middle. It was pleasant to come in from the snowy night and sit here."

"He [Meiklejohn] has played football with us. The field is removed a short distance from his office, that office with three windows. A framed excerpt of a poetic passage lies on the window sill of one. There are some prints on the walls."

Thus, the experiment. The students seem to be steeped in a strange, imitative seriousness--unlike the majority of U. S. collegians who abhor seriousness, and also unlike Britishers who study civilizations with casual assiduity.