National Affairs: At Princeton

Where does a college student live? Where should he cast his vote? The answers, of course, vary with the students. An orphan student might have no other legal domicile than his dormitory. Perhaps any student’s dormitory rooms are or may be his voting residence, since at most institutions dormitory space is leased for a whole year and most election laws require only a few months’ residence.

In Princeton, N. J., a lively row was on last week. President John Grier Hibben of the University appealed to the county election board; Dean Christian Gauss called on eminent judges; students posted irate placards—all because a local election board had decided that no Princeton University undergraduate was eligible to vote in Princeton except the few whose non-college homes are there.

What complicated things and heightened undergraduate anger was the decision of another local registration board that students at the Princeton Graduate College and the Princeton Theological Seminary* could vote in Princeton.

With President Hibben’s approval, the undergraduates instituted a boycott of Princeton’s shopkeepers, whose chief subsistence is the undergraduate trade. “No Vote—No Trade,” “Recrimination for Discrimination,” cried campus signs. This phase of the affair was reminiscent of the origin of it all. Last year the Princeton undergraduates were not allowed to vote in a mayoral primary election. Reason alleged: one of the candidates was Benjamin Franklin (“Bacon”) Bunn, keeper of the co-operative store on the University campus. Another candidate, a onetime faculty member named Van Nest, believed that the students would pour out to vote for popular Storekeeper Bunn sooner than for an obscure pedagog.

A mayoral election had seemed friendly horse play to the Princetonians, but in a presidential election they were not to be trifled with. Their citizenship, mostly newborn, surged within them. Their patriotism, not unmixed with less grandiose emotions common to young-manhood everywhere in football season, mounted to heights that made police reserves from Trenton seem necessary to the peace of Princeton. False fire alarms were sent in. A student mob of riotous proportions assembled. Party banners were torn down and up. A passing motor bus and all its passengers received a thoroughgoing shake on Nassau street. Dean Mauss strode out to quiet his charges. They ignored him and roistered long and late.

But the registrars stood firm. Only a modicum of relief in special cases was expected from the County election board.

*Princeton Theological Seminary students are colloquially called “Seminoles.”