Value for Value AN EDITORIAL So far, refusal of the state executive to permit this college to expand into a four-year school appears to have had no dulling effect upon enthusiasm of the student body. We still have faith in ourselves. Accomplishing goes forward. Students take as much interest as before in school life. Down town sentiment seems to be somewhat more stringent, however. We hardly realized what interest the townspeople of Ogden have taken in the college until this need to suport it arose. Engaging in such a difficult and sometimes baffling project as improving ourselves, no doubt the school must continue to seek forever better ways on the part of both faculty and students in doing this job. But thus having acknowledged our modesty, we still find it heartening to know the public nearest to us senses the sincerity of our purposes and the measures of success we have attained in it. Foibles will "out" in a democracy where free speech and intuition both operate with disconcerting accuracy. And so will virtues. Students may not all have noticed that the press mentioned that during the recent effort in the legislature, talks upon the college often became testimonials to the aims, purposes and background of service contained in the person of Dr. Henry Aldous Dixon, Weber college president. Won to us, the legislators supported the proposal giving us four-year stature. Yet following a special line not altogether obvious, the executive department of the state cut our hopes short. But we cannot feel that any right-thinking government can continue to subordinate the wishes of the approximately 85,000 persons who comprise the progressive citizenry of Weber county. It would seem to us that such a sizeable group in a state of Utah's proportions should be granted its voice. There is besides, of course, another ponderable percentage of Utah population willing to give us such recognition in this honorable educational aim. Naturally the question arises, What is money for if not to buy the best and most constructive value ? It is not to be hoarded. Its best and ultimate purpose is to improve the lot of the people. In looking backward, we must applaud the educators and others who voted for construction of the present Ogden high school building. Now it has been paid for some time since, and not a single murmur has hinted of pain in the expenditure. Today we have an edifice which means much, perhaps beyond calculation, to Ogden boys and girls, and to the communities where they establish. And for what purpose would the money have gone if not for this? Certainly not for much we could hold up to view and say it was more worthwhile. The money would have seeped and drained away through thousands and possibly millions of tiny seams and crevasses, and none among us could possibly have pointed to any major perceptible good it accomplished comparable with this one. As the thrifty citizens of this state, we want a value for our money and must stand firmly behind any executive who sincerely and consistently insists upon such value. Our hope is that the present government does not follow what is so often and so sadly true in our democracy. That is, that public office erodes the character of public servants. But while giving support to insistence upon value received for public dollars, we sense the wisdom of a socialized viewpoint for the true statesman. This viewpoint means spending judiciously as the basis of further profits and includes social profits as well as business profits. In the eyes of Christianity, this equating of monetary with social values should have more countenance than elsewhere. This stress upon enhancing the worth lying within a man is what we always felt the word "church" stood for. It is also what we know the word "state" is increasingly coming to stand for. Now while continuing to hope for expansion of the college, let us as students and teachers and as a school continue also to put more and more into the work assigned to us as educated persons in process. While trying to discharge our work in balance and suitably varied with wise pauses for recreation, should we not resolve at this time to do it increasingly better, as we are capable of doing it? As for example, should we not resolve to make every class period count for something learned, some better comprehension of our instructor's purposes? This purpose could well include a desire to achieve consistency in attendance at classes. Such work, and it seems to us, such work only, merits the expansion we so much desire at this college. And furthermore, such work, as it becomes ever more palpable to the people of Utah, will continue to win friends for the school and for ourselves as students and later as graduates looking for employment. Remember that development of Weber college into a four-year school is considered inevitable by well-informed, leading citizens of Utah. page twenty-two Time to Kill (continued from page 7) The nightwatchman of a grocery store just two blocks down the street had been killed at about 1 a. m. He had surprised a burglar rifling the store safe. The newspaper story said the killer had also taken money from the dead man's wallet. That was how Max got the blood on his hands, she thought as she made her way woodenly back to the dingy apartment. Clancy came to see them around noon, just as Max was getting up. The big cop stood just inside the door, hands on hips. He eyed Max interestedly. "I suppose you can account for your actions around one o'clock this morning?" he asked in his thick Irish brogue. "Sure, I was home by midnight," Max said hastily. "Ain't that right, Mabel?" Both men stared at her. "That's right," Mabel said brightly. She gestured vigorously toward the clock on the bureau. "I remember looking at the clock just as Max came in." Officer Clancy shoved his hands deep into his pockets and walked across the room to stare at the clock. "Hey." He scowled deeply and consulted his own wrist watch. "Do you mind if I have a look around?" he asked. "Or do you want me to get a search warrant?" Max shrugged. "Go ahead and look." In a few minutes Clancy came out of the bedroom with the nickel-plated automatic in his hand. He looked at the clock again, then went over and snapped a handcuff on one of Max's wrists. Max cursed and struggled but it didn't do him any good. The big Irishman shoved him out of the apartment to a waiting squad car. When they were gone, Mabel straightened her shoulders. With Max under arrest, she could tell them plenty. A little smile playing at the corners of her mouth, she picked up the clock and moved the hands forward to the correct time. It had been an hour slow ever since last night when she set the hands back. Thoughts from Aloft (continued from page 9) MAN TO MAN From the viewpoint of a teacher who once taught chiefly veterans in his English classes following the war, I feel that a period of military service between high school and college is wonderful. The veteran treated his instructor straight across the board man to man. He had grown-up thoughts and emotions and spoke and wrote them that way. Maybe my feelings are explained also by the way the veteran viewed the teacher: He had faced a long procession of "brass" of all grades, had decided in true American style that much of it was bunk, thus was more inclined to regard the teacher as a sensible person by contrast, I presume. On the other hand, his reasonable attitude may have been the result of recently being shot at. Which brings me around to the inspiration that perhaps we could make classes more human by sending the teachers away for a year to be shot at. C. M. Nilsson. SCHOOL SPIRIT The subject of school spirit has been a much discussed one during the years I have been at Weber. I should like to re-open that discussion now at the risk of repeating what may have become platitudinous. My purpose is not to criticize or evaluate but to attempt a definition and to suggest a method of accomplishment. I believe school spirit is not merely a matter of wildly cheering mobs or crowds which chant well in unison. These are but two of its more obvious manifestations. Instead I think school spirit is infectious pride, group pride. It comes from pride in the courage of a team, in the perfection of a play, in the excellence of the debaters, in the achievements of the publications, in the leadership of the student body officers and in the main curricular as well as extra-curricular doings of the school. School spirit can exist only if we can be proud of these things. But to be proud of an activity we must know of that activity. We must attend the games, see the plays, read and own the publications, hear of the debater's exploits. The definition of school spirit is not completed, however, until our pride becomes infectious. This calls for response on our parts to the achievements of all the campus groups. We must show our individual appreciation. Thus we infect others with our enthusiasm. We must tell one another of the good jobs being done around us. Are you proud of the baseball team? Tell others. Do you believe that some teacher is doing an especially good job? Show your pride in belonging to the same school as he by talking about his merits. Then we'll have school spirit. John G. Kelly. WORTH OF POETRY I often frighten my English students into a reluctant obedience by threatening to read them a poem. It has been my experience that a prospective failure, a crack across the knuckles with a yard stick, or a mid-term delinquent report has none of the startling effect on rowdy and lazy students that does an offhanded remark in class that a poetry book is nearby. On several occasions it has been satisfying to note that under the pressure of such a threat even the engineers have put away their slide rules and worked the problems in their heads for the rest of the hour. Certainly then, there is much to be said against those who continue to insist that poetry has no practical value. No one has ever discussed with very much success the value that poetry has for the human animal. But in light of the persistency with which poetry stays among us, its value would appear to be very real although poorly defined. For poetry keeps cropping up in the strangest places and among the least likely people, and I often suspect that even among some freshmen the practice of reading and writing it is not entirely lost although, of course, a proper regard for their good name would compel them to deny this if they were questioned. I once edited a literary magazine in school and one day a weird-looking girl brought me a pile of poems which she said God had dictated to her at her request. She asked me if I ever talked with God about literary problems and I replied that though I needed all the help I could get, I felt that adding this new member to my staff would only create discord since we both would prabably have strong ideas about how to run things. But that is not what is important. What is important was her determination to hide the fact that she wrote verses by making God responsible. The verses were poor and in claiming a celestial authorship for such doggerel I felt she had committed a severe blasphemy. But then she couldn't take credit, or discredit, for them herself. She was a respectable girl with a plain face and she was trying to get into a club. We know about the lawyer who tried to write a poem and could not get beyond "whereas". But I had a friend in the army who had once been a bootlegger who showed me one night when everyone had sacked several exquisite poems he had written. I sent some of them to Yank and they were published under a pen name. He could not very well write and publish verses under his own signature and expect a hearty welcome from civilian life and the mob. And there was a mess sergeant who wrote sonnets while he, baked powdered eggs, and a jeep driver who composed a poetic drama in five acts which he called Erika from a source of inspiration that is better left undiscussed. The only volume of Stephan Spender's poems that I saw in Europe was being read by a British tommy as he rode into battle on the back of a tank. There seems to be a hunger for beauty that we are ashamed to admit. We are ashamed and then we wait and hope for a moment away from the crowd, the folks who would have us up and doing, and away from the tyranny of living. And in that moment strange things that we have forgotten come to us and we look for a friend to whom we can show the results. All we ask is that he read the stuff and be quiet. More than one life has been ruined when the word got out. Wayne Carver. page twenty-three