THUG AND CHUG

The vigor with which the Cambridge police force has been prosecuting minor offenders--such as students unable to pay for keeping their cars in a garage--would give the appearance of an alert and efficient protection. Registrar Goodwin, however, has exploded this theory.

It does not seem as if the local minions of the law would have time for such wholesale tagging as occurs it they were engaged in active pursuit of real criminals. The protection must be slack if a lawbreaker can commit a series of twenty-nine crimes over a period of eight years, and then receive a sentence of one year. This person apparently stands a far better chance in the course than Mr. Undergraduate '26, who gets fined on his first minor infraction.

Not only are the students thus preyed upon by the police, but certain of the local inhabitants help themselves to tires, Fords, and parts thereof, with impunity. The police merely smile blandly. When the inexperienced student applies at the station for aid in locating his car, he is assured that some of his friends have probably borrowed it. After all, what is a Ford or two between friends?

According to Goodwin, even the judge is a lawbreaker. Hence his natural antipathy towards the peaceful students, often present in the courtroom in numbers which remind us greatly of a History 1 lecture. Cases have been known, when students showing their innocence of one charge, have been fined on the strength of a dear old statute saying that cars cannot be parked in any part of Cambridge for over an hour. And yet a vicious thug, on July 8, 1924, was convicted of house breaking, and of larceny, but his case was filed.