A CENSURE OF A CENSOR

The faculty of the University of Hlinois, if a report in the New Student be accurate, has ousted Lloyd Rceve from the staff of the Illinois Magazine for writing discerning sketches of the zinc industry. At the same time Editor-in Chief Baker has been deposed for publishing the articles. Significantly enough the authorities took this action immediately after a delegation of zinc manufacturers had made an informal call.

Such application of outside pressure as this destroys the whole ideal of modern education. Presumably a man goes to college not to learn a certain number of facts but to acquire intellectual independence, the power of thinking for himself. If faculties carefully sandbag expressions of opinion which run counter to capitalist interest, they betray that freedom of thought which it is their function to inspire.

Of course, since it is responsible to trustees who are government officials the state university is exposed to many tricks of the political trade. More often then an endowed college it firms its policy to the caprice of press propaganda or less tangible ramifications of influence. But these circumstances should be to its leaders a challenge rather than an excise for truckling to vested interests. Certainly, no justification exists for the humiliation of student Reeve, whose single offense was the weaving of clever story about conditions in the zinc industry of his home town.

As population shifts westward, the state university will become an increasingly important medium of instruction. In order to progress toward the educational ideal, outside pressure must not be a factor in faculty policy. Only if it is itself free from control can a university foster that essential of education, intellectual independence.