Six Editors Expelled For Publishing Hoax In R.P.I. Newspaper

An "April Fool's" story in the Rensseclaer Polytechnic Institute's undergraduate newspaper announcing that the Easter vacation had been cancelled because of a campus quarantine has resulted in expulsion of the newspaper's entire editorial board.

RPI dean Richard A. Waite, who fired the six executives of the weekly "Rensselaer Polytechnic," explained that the students "took the story seriously, causing considerable confusion and temporarily disrupting telephone facilities on the campus and in local hospitals."

The bogus article, which also claimed that the Institute's president had been confined because of "a mysterious plague" unintentionally coincided with an actual outbreak of intestinal illness that had stricken more than 125 students just two days before the paper was published.

In the following issue of the weekly, the associate editorial board, which had taken charge, printed an apologetic article under the five-column headline "Quarantine Hoax Backfires."