From the Boston "Herald" of October 9, 1937:
"William J. Burns and Douglas Mitchell, sophomores at Harvard, were arrested last night for creating a disturbance in the dining-room of the Mayflower Hotel by letting loose a South American baboon with a pack of firecrackers attached to its tail. When arraigned before Magistrate Conroy, they declared that they were celebrating Harvard's Early English victory over Yale, and were discharged."
From the Yale "News" of June 12, 1940:
"In the presence of twenty thousand spectators, including the President of the United States, the greater part of his Cabinet, and several foreign ambassadors, Yale's 'varsity eight simply ran away from Harvard in the tenth annual competition in Romance languages and philology. Yale took the lead from the start, and at the end of fifteen minutes was ahead by 16 points to 7.... This splendid victory is due in part to the general superiority of the New Haven eight, but too much credit cannot be given to little Howells, who steered a flawless contest. The Blue made use of the short, snappy English style of text-book, while Harvard pinned its faith to the more deliberate German seminar system. After the contest captains for the following year were elected. Yale chose Bridgman, who did splendid work on Corneille and the poets of the Pléiade, while Harvard's choice fell on Butterworth, probably the best intercollegiate expert on Cervantes. In the evening all the contestants attended a performance of 'The Prince and the Peach' at the Gaiety. It is reported that no less than nine out of the sixteen men have received flattering offers to coach Romance language teams in the leading Western universities."
From the "Daily Princetonian" of February 13, 1933:
"Princeton won the intercollegiate championship yesterday with 63 points to Harvard's 37, Yale's 18, and 7 each for Brown, Williams, and Pennsylvania. Princeton won by her brilliant work in the classics and biology. Firsts were made by Bentley, who did the 220 lines of Homer in 29-3/5 minutes, scanned 100 Alcaics from Horace in 62 seconds flat, and hurdled over nine doubtful readings and seven lacunæ in the text of Aristotle's 'Poetics' in 17-1/2 minutes. Two firsts went to Ramsdell, who made only two errors in Protective Colouration and one error in explaining the mutations of the Evening Primrose."
From the editorial columns of the New York "Evening Post" for July 7, 1933, and October 11, 1938:
(1) "Scholastic competitions have ceased to be the means to an end and have become an end in themselves. The passion to win has swept away every other consideration. Professionalism has laid its tainted hand on the sports of our college youth. High-priced professors from the University of Leipzig and the École des Hautes Études are engaged to drill our teams to victory. Men who should have long ago taken their Ph.D. have been known deliberately to flunk examinations so as to be eligible for the 'varsity contests. Promising students in the preparatory schools are bribed to enroll with this or that college. The whole problem of summer mathematics reeks to heaven. It is not enough that a student during eight months of the year will put in all his time on invariants and the theory of numbers. Vacation time finds him at some fashionable resort, tutoring the sons of millionaires in multiplication and quadratic equations."
(2) "Thus our so-called student 'activities' are neither active in the true sense, nor fit for students. There has grown up a small clan of intellectual athletes who win victories while thousands of mediocre students, six feet and over and having an average weight of 195 pounds, stand around and cheer. Our student-managers have become men of business, purely. The receipts at the last Harvard-Yale debate on the popular election of United States senators amounted to more than $50,000. The Greek philology team spends three-quarters of its time in touring the country. The Evening Howl prints the pictures of the Φ Β Κ members every other day. It is time to call a halt."