No News, or What Killed the Bulldog

An academic community of the far-reaching influence and prestige of Yale has a definite news value in the public prints. When she speaks or acts, the press responds with its precious space. Official opinion receives its journalistic recognition, as well as the words of anyone connected with its various departments. The four letters which compose her name represent good copy.

Yale has recognized the value of good publicity in the appointment of a director to disseminate news through the established channels. The news in the past has been despatched efficiently and with a normal timeliness, yet a vague misapprehension seems at times to shroud the release of what is, to undergraduate eyes at least, important information. The commonalty is then left to settle issues for itself, while struggling in a slough of conjecture as to what may or may not happen.

It is superfluous to point out the disastrous results which have attended opportunistic policies of publicity in universities of the past. We have only to look northward to Cambridge to see the most recent example. The sum total of this Fabian policy is always doubt and misapprehension, giving rise to all sorts of misinformation and surmise. Yale owes a debt to her graduates and undergraduates alike in keeping them well informed as to current university procedures.

The question of the effect of the proposed House Plan on Sheff's social life is naturally an important one. It has numerous implications, depending on the use to which the dining halls in the new Vanderbilt Square are put. The varying interpretations as to what it will imply, however, are as confusing as they are exasperating. All of which brings up the old proverb that if a dog bites a man, it's not news, but if a man bites a dog, it is news. The man has evidently bitten the dog in this case. Sheff, is to have a House Plan, but the news or lack of it has been so completely disconcerting, that we wonder what will happen. Yale News