Worcester Polytechnic Institute - Peddler Yearbook (Worcester, MA)

Page 6 text:

4 Our honored principal, Mr. Dr. Prof. C. O. Thomp¬ son, A. M., Ph. D., received an unsolicited report from parties known by him to be perfectly reliable, that the Senior class was about to issue a publication even worse than the 44 scurrilous pamphlet” issued by the class of ’77, so termed by the honorable Doctor, on account of some references, concerning the institute and faculty, which it contained, and which were and are believed to be perfectly honest and truthful in every respect by the great majority of those who have had the three years’ experience in every day life, as students, at the W. T. I. At the time when the honorable Doctor received his 44 reliable ” information, there had been no contribu¬ tion to our MSS. which in any way, shape or man¬ ner, referred to the faculty or institute. The honorable Doctor demanded of the Commit¬ tee of Revision the MSS. which had been entrusted to their care, and the committee properly refused to do that which they had no right to do. The class held a meeting to consider the case, and soon afterwards the honorable Doctor informed us in a chapel speech that 44 the character of the MSS. was disclosed by the fact that several members had in class meeting withdrawn their contributions from the MSS. and thus condemned themselves.” The fact is that not a letter of the MSS. had been or was in any way likely to be withdrawn, and, in fact, new contributions had been rereived, and we have no hesitation whatever in stating that his 4 ‘reliable” informants had either been made to believe, or had

Page 5 text:

EDITORIAL. Notwithstanding the severe criticisms heaped by some persons upon the publications which have been issued by several classes as they have graduated from the W. T. I., the class of ’81, believing in the old maxim that “ Truth crushed to earth will rise again,” now publish this little book which has suffered more from false representations than any of those issued by former classes. There are some few persons who seem to have, well developed, the peculiar faculty of taking any statement, remark, or civil question, and, far from receiving it as other persons would, in the way in which it was intended, twist it around and persist against all good sense and reason, in taking it as an intended insult. With all such persons we wish to have nothing to do, nor with such as, with the same object, bring forth preposterously absurd arguments clothed in such deceptive terms as are well calculated to mislead those who do not consider all points in both sides of the question. After we had begun seriously to consider the ques¬ tion of publishing a Class History, two members of the class went to Boston on business not in any man¬ ner connected with the publication of a class book, but, while there, made inquiries as to the relative cost of printing the Class History.

Page 7 text:

5 on their own responsibility concocted some misera¬ ble, unmitigated falsehoods, and this very fact was the stimulant which became the seed of new contri¬ butions which would not otherwise have been thought of. This book as now published has been completely revised, and its contents we will support until con¬ vinced that they are wrong, and that by arguments stronger than our last three years of student life. The Committee. Worcester, Mass., June 30, 1881.