I watched them going off together, arm in arm, towards "fraternity row"—and wondered what that campaign would be.
It did not take me long to investigate the real state of affairs. There were some thirty members of the freshman class listed in the dean's office under the designation of "Jew," "Hebrew" or "Ethical Culturist." And the faces that I met under freshman caps were certainly Semitic, to a large percentage.
At first it annoyed me. Annoyed me more, too, when the first member of the freshman class to be expelled for ungentlemanly conduct was a Jew. There were one or two others, I noticed, who would sooner or later reach the same end if they did not keep away from the city at night—and from the things the city teaches.
These one or two gradually became scape-goats for the rest of the Jewish boys in the class. They were sons of rich fathers; they paraded their automobiles about the campus—and thus broke the rule number one in the "freshman bible." They had unbridled tongues, and used them ungraciously. One of them, a big, swaggering chap, "went out" for his class football team—and, having been selected to play in a minor game, developed a dying aunt overnight and disappeared for the day. When he came back, on Sunday night, he was caught and hazed. His automobile was dumped on its side in the middle of the campus. His face, when I saw him the next day, was a network of plaster strips. Three days after that he left college—and I, for one, was devoutly thankful for his resigning. He did not belong in our college, had done nothing to fit himself into its environment, had talked loudly, acted the cad and the coward—and had reaped the reward of such a person, Jew or Gentile, in whatever community.
The persecution—for it had taken on proportions worthy of that name—went forward, however. There was an annual "freshman parade," for instance, when the entering class was dressed in grotesque costumes and sent marching in and out a lane of laughing spectators to the football field. In my own freshman year this was a good-natured affair—and each class, including the victimized one, took it for the boisterous joke that it was.
But this year, when the parade was starting at the gymnasium, and the big, card-board placards were being lifted to the marchers' shoulders, I noticed that all the Jewish boys were being put conspicuously into one group. They would march together. And those placards! The sickening succession of them was only a repetition of "Oi oi" and the pawnbroker's symbol—and humor of that high order. And these Jewish freshmen went down the street amid the jeering—and I had to stand by and see them, some with heads high and eyes blazing with pride, others stumbling and bowed, one of them with tears running inanely down his cheeks—had to stand there and watch it all, and curse myself for a coward because I would not, could not, go out into the middle of the road and tear down, one by one, the daubed, cheap jests that they had to carry.
A few weeks later there was another such celebration. There were speeches to be made. The class wits—and what class is without them?—were to have their turn.
And their wit—what did it consist of? One after another, they made blunt, exaggerated references to the "invasion of the Huns," to the "Jews coming unto Jordan," to "the lost Ten Tribes ..." and hoots of applause went up to the night sky like the roar of a Philistine army!
One of the men who spoke was a classmate of mine—a fellow-member of the joke paper's board. I knew him well, for he had been to see me often. It was only a few nights ago that he had told me he was chosen to speak at this celebration, and had promised me he would make no reference to the Jewish influx.
"I don't agree with you about it," he had said. "You're too sensitive, all you Jews—and anyhow, you know perfectly well we're not aiming this campaign at you personally. It's against this big bunch of them in the freshman class."