By April C. Armstrong *14

In this week’s installment in our recurring series, the Princeton University Library addresses accusations of censorship, older alumni express support for the admission of women, and more.

November 19, 1923—The University Librarian, James Thayer Gerould, enters the ongoing controversy between Princeton and Upton Sinclair. Gerould defends the Library against Sinclair’s allegations that it does not give students the opportunity to learn about contemporary labor movements.

Of your own works, the catalogue records eleven titles… so far as the Princeton Library is concerned at least, there is no effort to interfere with the intelligent and fearless discussion of progressive movements.

November 20, 1968—Alumni reaction to coeducation has come with a surprising development: One class that were students a half-century before has reportedly expressed overwhelming support for the change, despite a general majority who have written disapproving letters or spoken out negatively at alumni meetings.

November 21, 1890—Edward C. Towne writes a letter to the editor of the New York Tribune to express disappointment that Princeton is becoming so enamored of football.

The refinement and ethical purity of this manliness, as you may note it in any great gathering of Yale or Princeton students, did not come with football, and will not go when football shall have ceased to delude and disfigure and degrade. …  But, happily, we are not pagan, and there is no valid reason for our being semi-barbarous, through vulgar sport utterly contrary to sound knowledge of the human body and its laws.

November 24, 1865—Locals urge authorities to take action to prevent any future “demonic demonstration as the horn spree” that students recently engaged in, “a riot in a legal sense.”

We…would have it understood that the College is intended for pure and virtuous students, and not for such as indulge in drinking, gambling and midnight revelries: and the influence of moral and religious young men ought not to be neutralized by the dissolute who abuse the bond of brotherhood by making it a cover for their crimes.

For the previous installment in this series, click here.

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