Education: Slide Rule

Harvard College meant to take no chances. As a postwar requirement, every freshman living in Harvard Yard’s hallowed but inflammable old halls had to know how to make a quick exit by rope. Last week the dean’s office declared there had been too much backsliding in rope sliding, ordered all proctors to see that their charges had clambered down a twelve-footer at least twice. Some, like Freshman John Brown of Holworthy Hall, practised from their windows (see cut), others in the gym. Among Harvard’s reasons from stricter enforcement: last winter’s Kenyon College fire, when nine students lost their lives (TIME, March 14), and last month’s blaze (three dead) at the University of Oklahoma.