SCHOLASTIC SPARRING

The case of the University vs. tutoring schools is a long, fifteen-round bout in which, for the past few years, no very decisive blows have been struck. Outside the University, Manter Hall School last year landed a light left when they sued Time Magazine for libel for saying they did ghost-writing and were awarded all of six cents. The blow was only important in so far as it established the legal position of the school in relation to the University. Yesterday, however, the University connected with a sharp right when a bureau offering a review in criminal law called off the tutoring upon pressure of being asked to do so. From this it might seem as if the University had a relatively easy problem, necessitating only the asking of Manter Hall, Wolff's, Parker-Cramer, and the College Tutoring Bureau to stop their cramming.

Unfortunately they would be likely to laugh at the asking. Of course, they have their troubles. They, like doctors, are paid last, and of late there has been a discouraging trend toward one student taking a review and then passing on his tidbits to his brothers in distress. But, all in all, certain maestros of the schools have been able to hold their heads above water and to keep undesirable animals from the door, and they naturally show no signs of giving up. And so, the bout goes on.

One of the earliest and most effective blows struck for the University was not long ago when a school was closed up due to infringement of copy-right of a professor's book. This is apparently the sole means of attack left to the University at the moment. While it may be effective against bureaus selling notes on books, this attack is ineffective against general course coverage through lectures and such. For the legal status of copy-rights on lectures is in doubt.

Looking toward the future it is extremely doubtful if the University will ever be able to deal a knockout blow to the tutoring schools. But the possibility of a decision for the University is not so impossible. When instructors realize that they must organize their lectures and dole out their dismal reading lists for the "C" man as well as for the honor student, then the University will have done its part. And when this happens, then the students themselves will see that twenty gruelling hours of copying and time for re-reading could be better and more cheaply spent on the course reading itself. Then, in the words of former Dean Pound on the problem, it will no longer be a question of "the blind leading the blind"; the battered tutoring schools will have quit the ring.