Word: mensa
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Sixteen years ago a wealthy, eccentric English barrister name Roland Berrill organized Mensa, a club to be composed of men and women with an intelligence quotient higher than that of 99.9 per cent of the population. Berrill envisaged a round-table society (hence the same Mensa, Latin for table) of eggheads gathered together to exchange good talk and to serve as an advisory group in government policy-making...
...Mensa's membership grew slowly, for obvious reasons, and the Berrill recruits became increasingly lonely in their Olympian solitude, finally deciding to open the club to the rest of the top one per cent of the English people. Galled by this latitudinarian admissions policy, Berrill retired from the scene muttering about declining standards of excellence...
...Mensa has continued to retreat from the grandiose conception of 1945. But if the club has thrown overboard Berrill's dream that it might chart England's future, intellectual democracy has had its compensations. After a long period of stagnancy, membership has boomed tenfold since 1958, so that today there are 2,000 members. In the last year, a small platoon of advance guards have infiltrated this country and have already set up a flourishing chapter in New York, and are organizing a new group in the Boston area...
...gather some of Harvard's eggheads into their basket, local M's, as they call themselves, ran this ad in the classified section of the CRIMSON a few days ago: "ARE YOU UNUSUALLY INTELLIGENT? Existing members wish to enlarge group for diverse discussions, social activities, and studies. Apply Mensa, 74 Tudor St., Waltham, Mass...