EXPERIMENTING WITH FAILURE

About to cast them ruthlessly from her midst, benevolent alma mater stayed her hand, for the meanest are not to be despised. Thus the twelve Rutgers Freshmen who failed to pass their first semester courses have been raised from the ridiculous to the sublime--or perhaps to the more ridiculous. They are to go on exhibition before critical educational investigators. When Rutgers decided to retain the mentally-wayward twelve, to nurture them in a class all their own, and to engage her leading professors to teach them economics, history, mathematics and geology, she was manifestly actuated by motives ulterior to one of commiseration, for colleges have never put a premium on failure.

The dozen will be taught how to assimilate college and how to equate themselves more properly to the college world, so that when they re-enter college next September, they will be wiser and better Freshmen. The purpose in the minds of the Rutgers faculty in inaugurating this now departure, is to eliminate failure in college. And although failure in general is inevitable, still in the specific case it is eradicable. By this novel means, it is aimed to eradicate failure among many men who come to college misfits, and who would otherwise continue to remain misfits.

The success of the whole experiment rests in the collective palm of the twelve dropped Freshmen. They can make or break the test tube. This in itself must be a satisfaction compensating for the ignominy attached to their recent intellectual debacle.