Lure of Politics Today Is As Strong As 50 Years Ago, When Students Frolicked, Lit Up by Red Fire and by Hard Cider

University students have always taken sufficient interest in politics to march, in processions with red fire, horns, and other means of attracting public attention, all, supposedly, for the greater glory of the Eagle or the Star. In the past these parades have been things almost to be feared; the march was lit with red torch-flares and the marchers with hard cider or good Sandy McDonald supplied by the eager campaign managers, and the combination often went to the heads of the participants and led them to unlawful acts.

In particular, about 20 years ago, there was a parade, or rather two parades, which the Boston police yet recall with shakes of the head. A political procession from the university met, in Boston, a procession from M. I. T. Whether the two were in support of different candidates is not remembered, nor important, but the vanguards met and clashed in war, and soon the whole street was filled with a disorderly miss of rioters, belaboring each other with torches clubs, or whatever came to hand. Mounted police were sent for, and because of their elevated seats were able to wreak able to wrealy crest havoc among the students. Finally some torch beneath one of the horses, who reared and threw his rider. Other took up the scheme, and the cavalry was routed in great confusion. But the reserves arrived, and the students fled.

The practice of holding political parades of students had its origin in 1868 in the Presidential campaign of Seymour and Grant, when the procession was decidedly bibulous. For several years the tone of the hilarity attendant upon the rallies grew more objectionable, until in 1872, the Faculty decreed that no student should take part. Since that time the authorities have relented and have had little cause to criticise; the parades of today while enthusiastically attended, are law-abiding.