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SMAD. An Organ of Student Opinion. 1931. Volume 2. Number 1.

Just So Stories — How the College of Electors got its System

Just So Stories

How the College of Electors got its System.

I know a University College where all sorts and descriptions of people come from near and far to sit at the feet of the learned men who ruminate there. But unfortunately a spirit of unrest is abroad in the land and Bacchus has led the questing steps of the student into his foul temples and they are rapidly becoming familiar with the pubs and cabarets. Be that as it may there has appeared on the scene Brave Faithful—or his modern prototype.—Joey Mountjoy junior of spotless reputation (except that he blushes without any apparent reason and is believed to be influenced by his subconscious love impulses (following Riske, the psychologist, leader of the Love Impulse School, but otherwise thought to be a Pillar of the Baptist Union). This Joey by subtle means, has secured the conversion of Plonk, McPuff, and Dollings (another nice boy but spoilt by a "consuming passion for Sunday Band Concerts) and Fishup (so called because (if that unfortunate urge that he has to snaffle trifles from cafes). Not satisfied with having saved these worthies from sin, Joey worked on them until they agreed to join him in the formation of not only a moral Exec, but a moral college and all then set obout turning the faces of their fellows to the Light by the well-known professional process known as Degrees by Decrees. Wherefore such striplings as Howling (so called from being the singing fool of the place) and MacNaughty—whose style we all know was severely cramped—and even the bland Snowy were heard to murmur aloud.

Because McPuff and Plonk decided that tennis was the best game for boys and girls to play and wanted to divert most of the golden doubloons to the game of tennis and the grounds to play thereon, the athletes grew restive. Mahoney and his pugilists went round looking for heads to punch, and Rees and Ding Dong Dell amongst the rowers talked wildly of flying the Blue Peter and setting out for Canterbury College. Even Benjamin no longer panted his rotund figure round the green swathed in cream silk and red flannel but went from place to place asking what the sanguinary hole was flaming well coming to. Even Coyle of the Training College oafs could not tell him for the T.C. had not undergone the travails of unholesale conversion.

And finally even Joey discovered that the temper of his electorate had changed and though Mildred and Cathie remained dauntless in their support of his uplift movement Joey became as a man afraid and with McPuff and Plonk formed a War Cabinet which as any student of Conn. History can tell you is a nasty piece of work at the best of times.

At last succour was rendered by one, Killemoff N. Burnem, Katie for short who suggested something that seemed good. While it gave the ranks a better chance to voice their just reproaches it gave less opportunity of conferring the decoration O.B.E. (Order of the Boot End).

And so the College of Electors was born. But conceived in fear and nurtured on the bitter fruits of suspicion it withered and died. Then it arose, Phoenix like. Again it died. At present it remains to some a reminder of what might have been and to ethers a promise of what is still yet to be.

Now the stream of students minds afresh its weary way to the College. If there be a moral to this tale, perhaps the keener wits of the freshers can find it. But no crusade can be found to stir afresh the passions that died in the hearts of the students when Joey's revival meetings ceased to allure. That's all for to-night, children. Next Month: "How Riske and Raymond got the hump."