Conant Warns That College Expansion Era Is Over

Terrified by the possibility that their bank account (Postal Savings) may be attached and their building converted into an Irish night club if Mickey Sullivan wins his $100,000 libel suit, Lampoon members last night made an unsuccessful attempt to obtain a hearing at the Cambridge City Council meeting.

Earlier yesterday Sullivan had filed suit in Cambridge Court, denounced the Lampoon for its phony "expose" of his Communist affiliations, and announced that he would convert the moldy Poon clubhouse into a modern filling station.

Irish Night Club

But by last night he had changed his mind, and was drawing up plans for making the Mt. Auburn Street wigwam into an Irish night club with a neon sign reading. "No one but Irish need enter."

In the meantime the Lampooners were thrown into consternation when they were told by their attorney, Richard C. Evarts '13, Cambridge City Solicitor, that Sullivan had an "open and shut" case against them.

By six o'clock the Lampoon stood completely abandoned by its supporters. Faced with immediate eviction only a month after he had taken office, President W. Russell Bowie, Jr. '41 announced that the Lampoon would probably go through bankruptcy and resume publication under the name of "The Crusader" and the auspices of Phillips Brooks House.

"We're Hackers"--Bowlo

"I guess we went one step too far this time in looking for publicity," Bowie told the press last night. "We're hackers and we might as well face the facts here and now, hard though they may be."

University Hall, impatient with the Lampoon's repeated excesses, is believed to welcome the chance to place the tottering humor magazine under more complete Dean's Office supervision. College authorities were believed to have turned down a frantic 'Poon request for funds to fight the Sullivan law suit.

One prominent alumnus and former Lampoon editor yesterday expressed the general feeling of pity for the former cream of the college comics when he said, "It's too damn bad Lampy had to make such a botch of its first attempt to be socially conscious. The boys are young and inexperienced and should have known better than to try to compete with the Progressive."

A noted Boston banker who put up money to get the Lampoon out of hot water ten years ago, said last night, "A significant piece of American collegiana will pass from the scene with the demise of the Lampoon. But I'm not putting any money up for a lost cause. Sic transit gloria mundi."