The office of Lord Rector of the University of St Andrews is an ancient one, indeed as old as the University itself, the first to hold the office being Laurence of Lindores, whose figure now graces the top of the rectorial mace.  The Lord Rector represents the student population, as well as chairing meetings of the University Court.

The position exists only at the four ancient universities of Scotland, as well as Dundee, this university’s bastard child, and throughout the years a number of famous souls have held, or ran for, the Rectorship. John Stuart Mill, the libertarian to end all libertarians, was Lord Rector from 1865-1868. He became aware of the legend that if the smartest man alive walks through the Pends it would collapse upon him, and presump-tuously refused to ever walk through it.

The eccentric, cultured, and scholarly nobleman, John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, had the rare distinction of serving as Lord Rector for two terms. A convert to Catholicism, he owned the ruins of the Cathedral, and wanted to rebuild the ancient structure so that, among other things, it could be used as a graduation hall for the University. Obviously he did not succeed, but the structure he did rebuild on the Cathedral grounds are marked by the pinkish hue of their stone.

Another two-termer was the proverbial ‘local boy made good’, philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, born in nearby Dunfermline. Carnegie donated the land which is now the University’s playing fields, built the University a library (now the Psychology building), and established a fund for the benefit of Scottish universities.

The hero/villain of the First World War, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, the 1st Earl Haig, served as Lord Rector from 1916-1919 and afterwards as Chancellor. J.M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, followed the Earl Haig, serving as rector from 1919 to 1922, and the great imperial poet Rudyard Kipling followed Barrie from 1922 to 1925. The Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen was Lord Rector from 1925-1928.

The 1928 election found George Bernard Shaw and Benito Mussolini among the candidates, though both lost to Sir Wilfred Grenfell, a Welsh missionary to Newfound-land, of all things. Grenfell was succeeded in 1931 by the great African statesman, Field Marshal Jan Christiaan Smuts, who in turn was succeeded in 1934 by the Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi.

In the many years following Marconi, the  Lord Rectors tended to be aristocrats or other titled folks until two more celebrity rectors popped up from the late 1960’s. Lord Constantine of Maraval and Nelson (1967-1970) was a West Indian cricketer, succeeded (from 1970-1973) by John Cleese of the Monty Python comedy troupe. After Cleese, a hard act to follow, Rectors tended towards the dull and uninteresting until Donald Findlay QC, (1993-1999) disgraced during his tenure of office for participating in the tribal antics of the west of Scotland. He is more recently known for ungen-tlemanly behavior in Lower Parliament Hall.

The next Lord Rector will be chosen by a student election on October 28, 2005.