Report Card

P: In Buffalo a band of hoodlums broke into School 69 last week, emptied fire extinguishers over the auditorium's seats, smashed a snare drum through a bass drum, broke two large ceramic vases, slashed a movie screen to ribbons, desecrated a new American flag, broke both skylights in the gym, and in general indulged in a wholesale orgy of ink splashing, paint splattering, light-bulb smashing. Estimated damage: $1,000. What worried Buffalo authorities most: P.S. 69 is the twelfth school to be attacked since last February.

P: The American Council on Education reported that enrollments for the 170 academic courses offered on TV by 44 U.S. campuses would "fill a large university." The number: 12,000.

P: New York City took one more step in its gradual abandonment of the policy of automatic promotions for public-school pupils no matter what their marks. Last week it announced that it would hold back 11,709 out of 448,000 elementary-school students--a jump of nearly 6,000 over 1954.

P: The Institute for International Education tallied up the number of foreigners studying at U.S. colleges and universities, reported that there were 34,232 students, 635 teachers and 5,036 physicians from 129 different nations.

P: At a convention of his colleagues, Clarence Schoenfeld, a public-relations man for the University of Wisconsin, issued a blunt warning: "I have the uneasy feeling that so-called 'public relations' practices are muzzling and muffling our colleges. We have set out with great zeal to make friends and influence the public, and in so doing we have not only persuaded our professors to be more discreet, we have drugged these same professors into absolute silence . . . It may be quite true that our universities are quiet today because they have been intimidated . . . It is my personal conviction, however, that the real problem of the university today is not so much that fear has stopped it from freedom of utterance, but rather that misguided P.R. policies have led to an absence of those disturbing, pioneering, provocative ideas which it is the responsibility of the American campus to foster."

P: In Birmingham, two women who declared that they had been admitted by mail to the University of Alabama and then turned down when authorities found that they were Negroes won the first court decision against Jim Crow in the state's educational system. The women, ruled Federal Judge Harlan H. Grooms, "were denied admission to the university solely on account of their race and color." Henceforth, in accordance with the 14th Amendment, the university will have to admit qualified Negroes.

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