1925
Princeton raised its tuition to $400 per year, Harvard to $300, and the University of Nevada
from $50 to $75 to keep non-residents from crowding out residents. Col. "Billy" Mitchell was
court-martialed for insistent advocacy of the use of air power. George Frederick and Gladys H.
Dick produced antitoxin for scarlet fever. Dry ice was first manufactured commercially.
Undefeated Notre Dame under Knute Rockne and the Four Horsemen won the national title by
defeating Stanford in the Rose Bowl 27-10. Chicago Department of Health insisted that
"crossworditis" improved one's health. The British Medical Journal reported that women who
wore silk stockings in cold weather would suffer from erythema, a chafing and puffiness of the
skin. In July, William Jennings Bryan died in Dayton, Tennessee, on the day after winning the
Monkey Trial of John Scopes against a defense by Clarence Darrow. Norma Talmadge was
starring in Graustark and Gloria Swanson in Stage Struck. Babe Ruth was fined $5,000 for
general misconduct. The Metropolitan Opera raised ground floor ticket prices from $7.50 to
$8.25. Americans were reading Arrowsmith, An American Tragedy, and The Great Gatsby.
George Bernard Shaw won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush
opened for US audiences.
• Honor Society Formed • Football
• Intercollegiate Athletics • New Song
• Student Events • New Sport
• Lambda Iota Ball • Ku Klux Klan
Honor Society Formed.
The first Clarkson Honor Society was the Cum Laude Society
organized in the spring of 1925 by a petition from the outstanding scholar in each department. It
set as its primary object the encouragement and recognition of scholarship. Student membership
was limited to the senior class and was based upon a high standard of scholarship, character,
ability, initiative, and common sense. Student members were nominated by the heads of their
respective departments.
Some of the men who formed this organization set the standards for admission so high
that they barred themselves from membership in it. To be eligible, a student had to rank in the
top quarter of the senior class, must have at least 20 semester hours of grades H and C in the
work of his junior and senior years, and he must not have failed in more than four semester
hours of those same years.
Interestingly enough, of the eight men selected for membership in this new
organization, six paid their own way through their four years of College, and one was an ex-
serviceman who was sent to Clarkson by the government.
[NOTE. Students needed 144 hours for the engineering degree, and were graded then with H, C, P, L, and F;
H=passed with 3 honor points per credit hour; C=2 honor points; P=l honor point; L=0 honor points; F=failure. To
graduate a student needed 144 honor points.]
Faculty membership consisted of the president of the College, who also was the president and
permanent secretary of the society, and
