As a result, some men have been forced to return to Open after graduation to stand trial for offenses committed as sophomores. Officials are quick to deplore the two and one half year delay between indictment and trial, and feel the inconvenience caused individual defendants and witnesses is unfortunate.
The calendar problem could, of course, be solved by the simple expedient of increasing the number of trial judges. But Open feels that nothing of this sort should be done, lest it tend to lower the quality of the judiciary. Rather a 29-month wait for true justice than a swift and slipshod treatment of individual rights and liberties, say the university savants. In any event, they point out, increased effort by the present number of solons will probably eliminate the court backlog within twenty or thirty years.
...and IBM Machines
Perhaps the most controversial feature of Open's policies is its policy of open recruiting of all students. A battery of giant IBM sorting and filing machines whirr night and day in an attempt to improve the Open student body and make it even more well-rounded. The IBM's spew forth a thumbnail description of a worthy undergraduate every seven and one half minutes. Armed with this information, the Open recruiters converge on the area (the machines always specify an area, though not the name) and sift the local high school youth for the man who mostly nearly approximates the IBM ideal. Once he is found the recruiters send in a revised description of the man who is coming, and the IBM's revise their future selections in view of the men who have already been chosen.
Sometimes, but not often, the IBM-Open recruiting system goes wrong. For example, in 1941, a clerk in the admissions office inadvertently ran his nail along the edges of a batch of cards under process. The resultant nick caused the acceptance of twelve Cuban handball players.
The University, never slow to capitalize even on its own mistakes, immediately took up handball as a sport, and the record books show that the national handball doubles titles during the war years list the titleholder as "Open."
In conclusion, let it be said that Open is not interested in creating a graduate whose cranium is crammed with a staggering weight of facts. Logically enough, it is trying to produce a man with an open mind, who can see the broad implications of world-wide events and whose scope is not narrowed by the parochial limitations of mere facts. The Open graduate, while realizing the importance of other factors, is primarily people-conscious. His education is an education for living, for understanding and accepting the complexities of 20th century existence.
In this sense Open stands alone; for four years it prepares its students for this business of living, but not for this business of earning one.
The current parietal rules controversy at Harvard recalls a similar dispute at Open University in 1907.
Open students even in that early day were quick to point out to their administration that a rule requiring women to be out of men's rooms by 7:30 p.m. was antiquarian. Queen Victoria, they noted, had died six years before.
An emergency committee of students was quickly formed to discuss the situation. After an hour-long open debate, the group issued a statement attacking the administration's stand as "discriminatory against women."
The statement pointed out that women made up a good percentage of the world outside Open, and should not be antagonized. In face of such arguments, the administration quickly capitulated and extended room permission hours. There have been no complaints on this subject since then.