Finis
At last the "bizarre" Scopes trial was pronounced dead. Last week, after having delicately reproached it in a divided opinion which held the Tennessee anti-evolution law constitutional but reversed the conviction of Teacher John Thomas Scopes (TIME, Jan. 24), the Supreme Court of Tennessee denied Teacher Scopes's lawyer their request for a rehearing, and Attorney General L. D. Smith formally carried out the court's suggestion that the case be pigeonholed forever.
He Also Serves
His wrists protruded from his sleeves bonily. His trousers stopped dejectedly far short of his shoes. Over his spectacles fell a strand of straw-colored hair. His Adam's apple gulped ominously within his amp'e collar. He was a grind, a poor boy, a social catastrophe— but he left his books and store-counter to win the big relay race for Ohio State University. Pennants waved; men cheered; girls screamed. A hero emerged from a "poor nut."
That all happened in a play. The author of the play had actually attended Ohio State, had tried to "make" the track team. But he never won a big race, was never a hero, never "won his O." To make it all come true, to show how much they appreciated good drama, acting and advertising, the undergraduates of Ohio State University last week presented Alumnus-Author-Actor Elliott Nugent with the full insignia of an Ohio State 'varsity athlete when he visited his old college town with The Poor Nut.
On the Border
There was trouble on the border last week. In Tucson, Dr. Cloyd Heck Marvin angrily resigned as president of the University of Arizona. Four members of the board of regents resigned with him. In Albuquerque, Dr. David Spence Hill quietly resigned as president of the University of New Mexico. Both had been accused of disrupting campus morale; of being high-handed. Dr. Hill's ejection, an issue more broadly political than Dr. Marvin's, had necessitated the appointment of a new board of regents by a new Governor after an old board and Governor had taken his part. Dr Marvin's downfall was more picturesque.
As he left the thriving campus where he had expended much fruitful energy in the past four years, Dr. Marvin must have had to pinch himself to believe he was really going. It was almost ludicrous. Here he was, a planner of big things and a doer of them, a substantial, efficient person who left nothing to chance, actually tripped and frustrated by an obstacle which had seemed microscopic only yesterday. He was a lion laid low by a mouse, a pilgrim to El Dorado who had stepped on a dust adder.