Freshman Riot Laid to "Loneliness" By Boston School Committee Member

Joseph Lee, member of the Boston School Committee, ascribed Thursday night's Freshman "riot" to a "tremendous loneliness" on the part of the students, in a statement yesterday.

"Psychologically regarded, the episode was symbolic of their frantic desire to break into the parade of life," Lee said, calling the episode "a most pathetic, and yet a revealing thing."

Centripetal, Homogeneity, Congeniality

Criticizing the University for trying to develop "the exceptional man," he declared that "if Harvard could learn anything" it might turn toward "developing graduates who are a pleasant, helpful part of life in a world where modern communication and transportation have broken down geographical boundaries to a point of distraction, with the resultant effort turning back to the centripetal, toward a homogeneity and congeniality, and no longer centrifugal toward ascendency and exceptionalism."

Edwin G. Boring, professor of Psychology, in an interview last night was inclined to doubt the accuracy of Lee's description, crediting him with more knowledge of the Boston schoolboy's mind than of the Harvard student's.

"How can he know what was in the boy's minds?" he asked. Boring said the students were victims of crowd psychology in which they forgot reparations and suddenly expressed their personalities regardless of the object of their actions.