University circles are seething and rumors are rampant as to what will be the outcome of the assault upon Jewish students and a Chinese student at Harvard by an initiate of the Hasty Pudding Club, Harvard’s most aristocratic student organization, to which some of the foremost Americans belonged while at college.
Officers of the university last night would not comment upon the affair, but it is understood that a far-reaching probe of the initiation activities of the blue-blooded clubs has been instituted.
The initiate, George R. Clark, acting presumably upon orders from higher-ups in the Hasty Pudding Club, started a rumpus that nearly reached the proportions of a riot. It started when he appeared on the steps of the museum with a bucket of water and started to wash his feet publicly as an initiation edict. In addition to this, Clark attempted to keep all Jewish and Chinese students out of the museum. In keeping one Chinese student out, the latter is said to have been hurled down a flight of stairs, lauding on his head.
During the performance, Clark is said to have been obliged by his fraternity orders to yell loudly: “I don’t like kikes.” The young man stirred up a near riot among the Jewish students before he carried out his part of the initiation.
When several Jewish students laughingly paid no attention to the orders of Clark, he attempted to remove them forcibly from his audience, and only the intervention of cooler heads prevented what gave all evidences of developing into a racial riot. When Clark started a flow of oratory directed against Jewish students in which he stated that no “kikes” were going to enter the museum, cries of protest went up from the gathering of student onlookers, and Clark was finally quieted down after his attempts to drive away all young men he thought were Jewish.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
