Sex in Missouri

It seemed last week as though a mid-western cyclone had swooped upon the normally quiet campus of the University of Missouri. President Stratton Duluth Brooks stormed about "a fool trick without authorization of administrative forces." Irate alumni demanded student, even faculty expulsions. In St. Louis, Representative Robert F. Miller demanded a thorough investigation.

Cause of the hurly-burly was a questionnaire contrived by some students in the departments of sociology and psychology, assisted by their professors and circulated among 500 boy students and 500 girls. The questionnaire probed boldly into questions of sex: What did students think about trial marriage, sexual relations, licit and illicit, large families, birth control, proper age for marriage? The investigators explained that "during the last several decades it has become unceasingly apparent that there is something seriously wrong with the traditional system of marriage in this country." Two hundred students had written out their answers before President Brooks and the alumni objected. The answers were grimly guarded from curious eyes. Expulsions impended.