I love these Thirties movies. Everyone reviewed the mystery but what interested me was the college life. Clearly, this was an expensive eastern private school, home of the Gentleman's C. In the Depression there were basically two types of college students--the rich and those on scholarships and/or just getting by on various part time jobs, often having to stop for a semester or year when the money ran out. As Johnny Carson used to say, you buy the premise, you buy the bit. So I think these rich kids were kept here by their parents because they were totally useless in the real world and there weren't any jobs in the Depression for people who couldn't do anything but hang out with their friends. It was cheaper to keep them in school than let them ruin the slim profit margin of their parents' businesses. They were perpetual students and perpetual slackers. I imagine they were in this college until they all had PhDs or they got sent abroad, whichever cost their parents less. The men would be old enough when WWII came along to get cushy war jobs via the old boys' network, and the women would marry, divorce, and remarry within the same network.
Now, our heroine was obviously the other type of student. She was taking forever to get through school because it was taking her forever to earn the money. And since nobody was shown in a class, one has to assume that slowed down her progress, too. She won't "marry well" because the reporter got in the way and reporters were notoriously poorly paid. I hope she dropped out and married him right away because if she wasn't going to marry a rich student, she was wasting her money at this institution of learning nothing.
The dead fellow in the bell tower seemed to have been someone's project. I didn't understand why he was at the school but if he only had two years of high school he would have fit right in, academically. He seemed to have been enough of a slacker to concentrate on athletics instead of his bell tower job or school so if he had lived he might have done well in the culture of the place but alas, his quest for the old school tie was cut short. Another five or six years of frat life and he probably would have been indistinguishable from his wealthy brothers.
The professors at this college seemed to have as little interest in education as the students, to judge by the small sample we are shown. Apparently the perks of being employed by the college of "couldn't care less" included having time for extracurricular activities.
Because much of the wealth in the Depression era came through illegal or marginally legal activity, there was plenty of that going on with the students and their associates. Because superficiality and wealth were valued, snobbery, pettiness, and revenge were rife.
Prohibition was just ending, so no more bootleg booze, but there was the excitement of dead bodies littering up the campus so that was diverting. These people were such dullards it didn't even cross their minds to be afraid in the middle of a crime wave! The leaders of tomorrow--which accounts for a lot of things....
