Boston Boos

In Massachusetts are the U. S.'s No.1 university (Harvard), No. 1 engineering school (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), four of the finest women's colleges (Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith). First-rank colleges sprout thicker in that State than anywhere else in the land. When Massachusetts was ruled by frosty, side-burned gentlemen from Boston's Back Bay, the colleges were a potent force in State politics. Last week the presidents of 15 Massachusetts colleges and universities set out to discover how potent they are when genial, Irish-Catholic James Michael ("Jim") Curley sits in the Governor's chair on Beacon Hill.

Massachusetts Legislators were toying with a bill requiring every teacher and professor in the State to swear allegiance to Federal and State constitutions. At two public committee hearings the American Legion had loudly championed the measure. It looked as if it would pass. Bridling at what they considered an assault on academic freedom, some 15 college presidents last month petitioned for a third hearing.

If the schoolmen thought, as they climbed the steep steps to the State House one morning last week, that because it was their hearing they would have first say, they were promptly disabused. The committee was hearing the American Legion all over again. In a little huddle on one side of the committee room the presidents sat through a dozen speeches by representatives of the Legion, the Legion Auxiliary, the American War Mothers, the Massachusetts Guard, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Sons of the American Revolution, the Elks. It was after noon before the last proponent of the teachers' oath sat down.

Snapping out of their huddle, the presidents ran off a straight line plunge when the Rev. Louis Joseph Gallagher, president of Boston College, warned: "An oath is an act of religion. Oaths should not be multiplied without necessity." From the Legion side of the room came hisses, catcalls, boos. In turn Harvard's James Bryant Conant, M. I. T.'s Karl Taylor Compton, Amherst's Stanley King, Wellesley's Ellen Fitz Pendleton, Boston University's Daniel L. Marsh took the floor. For each there were rude hoots and other derisive sounds from the Legionaries.

At week's end it still looked as if the Legislators would pass a teachers' oath bill.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.