Word: clapper
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...Never 'write down' to anybody . . . Our observation is that one of the worst libels ever committed against the American people is the ancient crack about their having the intelligence of a twelve-year-old . . . Much smarter, we think, was the late Raymond Clapper's advice to his fellow newspaper people: 'Never overestimate the public's information and never underestimate its intelligence...
...janitor, compares the hall to Madison Square Garden: a different event each night. "But nothing really happens any more," he complains, "I always find couples petting in the dark corners on square dance nights, and several years ago some drunken Yalies crawled up the tower to steal the bell clapper, but it's nothing like the old days. The place is a little gloomy...
Dean of the College Francis R. B. Godolphin frowns on multiple thefts, however, and after the clapper has disappeared once, he brings disciplinary action. "The clappers are too expensive to replace," Godolphin says, "and although they are allowed to keep the first one if they aren't caught, from then on the freshmen can't do any more legal stealing...
This year the bellclapper escapade gained national notoriety when the members of the Denver Harvard Club briefed the Denver members of the class of 1955 in the best and most efficient way of pilfering the clapper. Apparently the Colorado alumni were anxious to renew their undergraduate days by hanging the clapper in their own clubhouse if their sons were successful in stealing...
Actually this year the clapper was stolen early, too early for an enterprising group of freshmen who made the dangerous ascent to the belfry only to find it gone. Not really knowing what the quarry looked like, they took the most mobile 'thing left--the mechanism of the clock. Without clapper, works or hands the Nassau Hall tower could neither strike the hour nor even point the time. This was not the first time however, that something other than the clapper had been tampered with. Back in the nineties freshmen upturned the bell, poured boiling water...