End of Derby Day

For 31 years at Yale, the last Saturday in April has been Derby Day, an event strictly for the hearty. Donning inventively outlandish costumes, Yalemen and their dates pile into trucks, horse-drawn wagons, old jalopies and chartered buses, drive ten miles to Derby, Conn. (pop. 10,264) on the banks of the Housatonic. There they drink beer, play ball, smash each others' straw boaters, throw their girl friends into the river and generally have a loud time. Some time during the afternoon there are intercollegiate crew races, the ostensible reason for the whole celebration.

Last week Yale announced the end of all these breezy customs. A university committee (nine facultyites, six undergraduates) decided it was all too much strain: too many fights, too many girls dumped in the Housatonic, too many truckloads (twelve in 1949) of beer cans and other litter to be hauled away afterward. One special cause of complaint: Yalemen and their dates had taken to filling water pistols with beer, discharging them at elderly ladies on Derby street corners.

Undergraduates rose in loud defense of tradition. On the evening after the announcement, some 2,000 of them, carrying torches and chanting "We want Derby Day!," marched on the residence of Yale President Whitney Griswold. Said Griswold from his front porch: "The question of Derby Day is a midget [compared with Yale's other concerns] ... I love a riot ... I loved them when I was an undergraduate ... I can yield to no one the record of smashed light bulbs . . . But I will not discuss university policy with a mob."

By week's end university officials had relented a little. They were considering an Interfraternity Council plea for a substitute outing, university-supervised, to be held a safe distance from any center of convention.

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