Education: Fence and Offense

Last week the police department of New Haven, Conn., was constrained to publish this grave announcement: “Stolen

“from the premises of Pach Brothers, Photographers … a section of what is known as the real Yale fence, valued highly for its associations and use in the photographic business. … It may have been taken as a souvenir and placed in some college fraternity and club houses.”

The full shock of the news could only be felt by Real Old Yale Men, because the Real Old Fence, which enclosed the Old Campus, was broken in a class rush in 1879. Onty two fragments of that original three-rail barrier are now extant, Photographer Pach’s and a section in the Alpha Delta Phi Chapter house. Yale undergraduates could only realize that no Yale team captain can be properly photographed except sitting, with his hair brushed, on Photographer Pach’s fragment. Photographer Pach announced that he had been offered and had refused as high as $10,000 for the relic. New Haven stirred angrily.

During the football game with Princeton, burglars had forced and entered an upper window at Pach’s. Hurried or casual passers-by remembered seeing the sacred fence being lowered to the street. On a stool in the studio was found page 26 of the Nov. 1 issue of Life, pinned down with a meat knife. The page contained a sketch showing a burglar, while his colleague comes down their ladder with swag, whispering to a policeman: “Shhh. We want this to be a surprise!”

There was many another clue. A battered Studebaker car with a Massachusetts license had been seen near Pach’s studio. Teasing telegrams arrived at the office of the Yale Daily News. A message from Winter Park, Fla., said that the Fence was being nibbled by alligators. From Niagara Falls came word that the relic had been seen tumbling over the cataract. In Chicago someone was holding “the third rail of the Fence.” Other telegrams came from Seattle, Poughkeepsie, Cambridge, Mass. All were signed “Algernon Gustavson.”

To Yalemen it was obviously “another Harvard trick.” Sure enough, six days after the theft, at a dinner given by the Harvard Lampoon (vitriolic, funny fortnightly) to members of the Yale Record (humorous magazine) at Cambridge, the Fence was miraculously revealed in the midst of the festivities. It was ushered in by “Robert Lampoon,” official jester and longtime honorary member of the magazine’s staff, with a piccolo. The purpose of the prank was also revealed: to make a picture of “Bob Lampoon” seated on the spot hallowed by Yale’s Hickey, Coy, Heffelfinger et al; to publish the picture in the Yale game number of the Lampoon.

Harvard authorities felt that ” ‘Lampy’ had been a bit childish.” Yalemen admired, were amused.

Last week President James Carey of Princeton’s Class of 1929 apologized to President John Grier Hibben of the University and offered damage payment for his classmates’ vandalism of last June when they overturned and tried to abduct the Christian Student, allegorically righteous campus statue, perennially daubed by undergraduates and alumni with beer, flour, paint or mud.