Our State University

IN our town we are at once grandiloquent and simple. We call ourselves “the Athens of America,” and we allude to our university as “school.” One can be grandiloquent about “school” too, of course, but only with a certain outlay of language. We waste no words. Our young people attend “school,” and the school year is now opening. At this season I like to saunter about the town or look in at the Town and Gown Club, where I greet my friends the professors on their return from their summer vacation.

The streets swarm with boys and girls ; for here we take coeducation as a matter of course, never having thought of anything else. Nevertheless, owing to the large professional departments, the boys far outnumber the girls.

In our university the dormitory system does not prevail, and these young people are very much occupied in getting themselves settled in the town, wherever they can find lodgings, usually lodging and boarding in different houses. Comparatively few of the citizens are averse to taking “ roomers, ” but meals are a more serious matter. Of late there is a somewhat aggrieved surprise among householders at certain new exactions on the part of applicants for lodgings. I am told that even freshmen now demand furnace-heated rooms, whereas a few years ago a student carried up his own wood and took care of his—or even her — own fire. The present pace was set by a few persons who built modern houses for their own convenience, and then admitted student lodgers in order to make good the outlay. These well-warmed rooms are distinctly a civilizing agency. When a man got up and made his own fire, with the thermometer at twenty or thirty degrees below zero, he did not care overmuch about a bath ; in fact, the idea was more than irksome. Now even the public baths are open every day, and not, as formerly, on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons only ; and in private houses the bathtub and the furnace enter hand in hand.

A glance at the university catalogue shows that most of the students come from within the state. This is natural where each state has its university, but on some accounts it is a pity. We are too proud of our state, and would be the better for rubbing shoulders with outsiders. The danger of a narrow view is not diminished by the fact that even the textbooks — or a portion of them — used in the public schools are made especially for the locality.

However, here are all these young people, presumably thirsting for knowledge. Those who are in a position to judge say that, on the whole, the thirst is keener than in the Eastern universities ; that the boy who goes to college because his people expect it of him is a much rarer person than in the older parts of the country. On the contrary, boys are urged to get into some moneymaking occupation as soon as they have graduated from the high school ; and this in families where the girls are given superior advantages. It happens occasionally that the son of a well-to-do farmer comes to the university, if not exactly under the parental curse, yet cut off from all the assistance which would have been given to him had he chosen to stay at home and work on the farm. If he must needs have an education, he may shift for himself.

A student who can prove his inability to pay is entitled to free tuition, and if unable to buy a uniform he may be excused from military drill. If, nevertheless, such an one, unwilling to proclaim his poverty, walks into the business office with the price of tuition in his hand, or stands in the ranks clad like his fellows, the secret may perhaps be between him and a large-minded president. I am told that such debts of honor are almost invariably paid in the end. As to the rest, the bare necessities of living cost but little, and there are furnaces to take care of and other employments of a similar nature. One enterprising youth, after a year of wellpaid wood-chopping and fire-tending, went away and married him a wife. Her savings as a school-teacher stood them in stead during the summer, and in the autumn she accompanied him to the university, — not to study with him, but to cook for a club of poor students. Each member of the club allowed a few cents per week to the caterer, and on that sum the pair lived ; and the thrifty husband was able to devote himself, single-minded, to his studies, with no further interruption in the way of woodchopping. He graduated long ago, and report says that in a neighboring town his business sign may now be seen: —

JOHN SMITH.

LIME, CEMENT, AND CIVIL ENGINEERING.

The eager and earnest young men who form the majority of the students have, it seems, a more serious difficulty to contend with than mere poverty. This is the lack of adequate preparation. Scarcely any of them have been able to get anything better than the narrow and machine-made instruction which is all that even the better high schools can offer. Of the general information which comes from contact with cultivated minds most of them show not the slightest trace. They go at their tremendous task with tremendous energy, and by sheer force conquer the obstacles that lie between them and their university degree. The occasional man of exceptional ability goes farther. He may become eminent as a specialist, and in that case a professorship is the goal of his ambition. Personally, I cannot help mourning the passing of the old idea of a college professor as a man of all-round culture ; but I am told that my notions are out of date.

There are other students, however, better dressed and more sophisticated, the sons of professional and business men. These are the ones whom one meets walking with pretty girls. They belong to the fraternities, and interest themselves in the usual diversions of the student. Some of them also study. Not many of them are rich, though they have a certain amount of money to spend. The rich men of the state mostly send their boys to the large Eastern universities. This custom, while apparently the loss of the university, is likely to be the gain of the community, and thus, in the end, of the university ; for we may trust that they come back with open minds, to be better citizens for the larger outlook.

As for the women, they too are of various kinds, from the girl who has saved up her earnings in order to take a course at the university to the daughter of one of the foremost citizens of the town. A witty professor once said that the woman students of the university could be divided into four classes. Beginning at the bottom, they were: (1) those who were of no account either as girls or as students ; (2) those who were good students, but indifferent to the graces of the toilet ; (3) those who dressed well and took the lead in the social amusements of student life ; and (4) Miss Mary Martin.

What most impresses the impartial observer is the extraordinary independence of these girls. It is the rarest thing in the world for a father or mother to come with a daughter, to see that she is suitably lodged and properly started in her university life. I am told that when this exceptional parent does come, he — or oftener she —— is inclined to think that the president of the university should personally superintend the selection of lodgings. Ordinarily the girl finds her own quarters and manages her own affairs. Her goings and comings, her hours, her companions, are all at her own disposal. Sometimes she is a serious student ; frequently she is clever enough to hold her own extremely well in her classes ; but apparently she is more apt than her brother to come to the university for the fun of it. In the Eastern states, where women have gained admission to the universities only after a long struggle, they take their privileges seriously. They go to Radcliffe or Barnard for study, and not for fun. The woman students in a Western college or university are not a picked lot. Seriousness is not absent, by any means, but frivolity is present. Girls even say that they hate to graduate, because they will have no more “good times ; ” and some of those residing in the town manage, by taking less than the full amount of work, to spin their university life out far beyond the orthodox four years. The girls who come to the university for amusement rather than for study are without doubt greatly in the minority, but because they are here at all there should be some system of guardianship.

It is true that in spite of her freedom the girl usually escapes without having fallen below her own standard of decorum. But her standard permits a good deal. I have met a boy and girl on their way to take a row on the river as late as ten o’clock in the evening, after a meeting of one of their literary societies ; and it seems that this is not an infrequent occurrence. It is but a sample of a freedom which is sometimes harmful. To be sure, in every condition of life things happen that ought not to happen. Nevertheless, a girl who is guarded during her years of irresponsibility may live a long life and go to her grave without a suspicion of what might have been her own capabilities in the way of folly if she had been left to herself at that time.

Public opinion would not indorse my views on this subject ; and yet in some directions public opinion is strict. When I first settled in this neighborhood, it reminded me quaintly of my native New England village. I had not thought to find in a Western town such pronounced views in the matter of a glass of beer and a cigar. That shows that I did not know the middle West. I shortly discovered, however, that the New England village and the Western town differ radically. Both communities are religious, but the latter offers a picturesque variety in the matter of religion. The seven or eight thousand inhabitants may take their choice among a dozen sects. Variety has bred tolerance. One seldom hears theological wrangling. The university, being nonsectarian, is frequently attacked as “godless,” particularly by the denominations which have colleges of their own to support.

The most striking difference between the New England village and the Western country town is in the attitude of the people toward innovations and toward criticism. In the former your criticism is received with unruffled serenity, and your attempt at introducing a new custom ends where it begins. In the latter the mere suspicion of a wish to criticise is enough to damn you ; but if you show yourself friendly, you may perhaps make a revolution in the customs and manners of the town. You cannot touch us politically. Our state is the finest in the Union, and we are satisfied with ourselves as a commonwealth ; but in little matters of social customs we are willing to take a hint, if the hint be agreeably conveyed.

We are a hospitable people. When I go back to my New England village, I am greeted pleasantly, but whatever fatted calves there may be are eaten behind closed doors. When my friends come to visit me in my Western town, they break bread in the houses of most of my acquaintances.

The town never forgets its share in the ownership of the university, which it construes into an ownership of the faculty. Concerning the students the citizens do not burden themselves with responsibility, but the professors need watching. For one thing, some of them have been brought — most unnecessarily— from outside of the state. We have a deep-rooted belief in the superiority of native products, and hold that we are false to the finest state in the Union if we want anything else. When the regents of the university come to town for their meetings, they are buttonholed by citizens anxious to enlighten them as to university matters. To tell the truth, the regents are not unwilling to be thus enlightened, and some of them even go about seeking information through these irregular channels.

The regents of a state university have certain idiosyncrasies, resulting largely from the manner of their selection. Political appointment means more or less the appointment of politicians. An effort is always made by the president of the university, and by the more conscientious of the regents, to have the places, as they fall vacant, filled by good men ; but the best men are hard to get, for the better they are, the more affairs of their own they have to attend to. If by good fortune a man of real fitness is induced to accept a position on the board, he is apt to have but scant leisure to devote to its duties. I have known such a man to resign, because he felt that he could not do justice to the university, — too modest to realize that his occasional counsels might be more valuable than his successor’s constant attendance. A man of leisure, broad-minded and devoted to the university, is a treasure not often to be found. One such regent this university had, and those who best know what he did for it have not ceased to mourn his loss. The board is usually made up of a few farmers, a few lawyers, a doctor or two, possibly a couple of business men, and a preponderance of editors ; the governor of the state being the chairman. The executive committee visits the university once a month ; the full board comes two or three times a year. The resident business manager is well acquainted with the affairs of the university ; so is the president, and so are one or two of the regents.

The regents are not, as a rule, capitalists, and they have not a capitalist’s scorn of a professor. On the contrary, their attitude is respectful rather than otherwise. The Westerner has a genuine respect for education. Professors coming from a large young university of an Eastern state tell me that the trustees there consider a professor a very poor creature indeed, who has presumably chosen his profession because of a singular deficiency in his brain which prevents him from setting a proper value on money, and which would probably in any case prevent him from achieving financial success. Some of our regents have even smaller incomes than our professors, and think the latter rather clever fellows to make their money so easily — as it seems to them.

In their management they are only occasionally swayed by politics. When this happens, it is chiefly the law school that suffers ; for it is easier to give a lectureship in law to a political friend than to let him try his hand at Latin or biology. Religious views play some small part. A Presbyterian regent might like to put in Presbyterian professors ; a Baptist will be likely to suggest sending to Chicago for Baptists. Nearly all of them would prefer natives of the state. Yet they admit that one of the important duties of the president is to select the best men he can find to fill vacancies, and they usually confirm his nominations. We may have our little dissatisfactions with the way things are managed here, but we think ourselves well off when we hear of the antics of a regent in a neighboring state, where the president of the state university was two years in getting rid of a notoriously immoral man, a member of one of the professional faculties, because the aforesaid regent “stood in ” with him, threatening to remove the president if he did not discontinue his efforts. Our regents, on the whole,mean to do their duty, but, as has been said, the best of them have not the leisure to master complicated details. Since the board meets seldom and the monthly sittings of the executive committee are exceedingly brief, university matters are left for the greater part of the time in the hands of persons who understand them, namely, the president, the business manager, and the faculty.

Regents may come and go, may do good or harm, but it is, after all, the faculty that counts ; and the professors in our state university, taken as a whole, form an admirable body of men. Their salaries are small, their work is hard, their situation is more or less isolated, there is never money enough properly to equip their departments, they are not always sure of the support of the regents, and in some cases know only too well that their work is not appreciated : yet they are not only hardworking and conscientious ; they are for the most part enthusiastic and cheerful. As far as my experience goes, all college faculties are mixtures of efficient and inefficient men. It could hardly be otherwise. Some of these men, it must be confessed, are mere plodders, some are shams ; but among them are many who would hold their own with the best. Some of them have already attained distinction, and are treated with deference in this country and in Europe. Others deserve to be known, but are prevented by the limitations of distance and a narrow income from that occasional contact with fellow workers in their own specialties which would bring them both inspiration and appreciation.

College trustees, and sometimes even college presidents, are too apt to think that if a professor prints nothing he is good for nothing. A brand-new president of our university told me that he was not going to keep professors who did not bring themselves into notice by their publications ; and I remember hearing of a man who, whenever he contemplated sending in a petition for an increase of salary, had a pile of magazines and pamphlets containing his publications put in a conspicuous place in the room where the trustees of his university held their meetings. He usually got what he asked, and I well remember the respect with which an old trustee of my acquaintance used to speak of the height of that pile of pamphlets. Yet his fellow scientists did not think highly of his publications, but said that he cheapened himself by shallow writing. Trustees sometimes fail to recognize the fact that a man may possess such a gift of teaching and such personal magnetism as to be an awakening and inspiring influence, — inspiring far beyond the bounds of the special subject which he teaches, — and yet may have no time to write. Indeed, in most of our state universities the professors are not allowed much leisure for independent work. We demand first of all that they shall be teachers; and since money is scarce, they have not enough assistants and are overworked. The position of a professor in a university remote from the centre of things, and with an attendance limited to its own locality, seems particularly hard, for he often has to be content with a merely local reputation. There are such men among my friends here, — men who give themselves to their work of teaching with an enthusiasm fresh every day. The good that they do is incalculable, yet they are not widely known, and most of them print nothing.

Some of the professors are natives of the state ; perhaps a majority of them are Western men by birth ; but most of them have been educated according to modern methods. Many, indeed, are graduates of Eastern colleges and universities, and nearly all have taken their year, or two or three years, in foreign universities. The others come from all parts of the country, and a few from Europe. Thus we get a pleasing cosmopolitan flavor which even our state pride cannot prevent us from enjoying.

But some of us may become learned without becoming broad, and we are all human. Truth compels me to state that my friends of the various faculties have their little jealousies. The classicist thinks science a necessary evil, to be firmly kept in its inferior place ; the regular school of medicine thinks homœopathy an unnecessary curse, for which there should be no place. They are all obliged to tolerate one another, and that does them good. Whether all these elements will combine harmoniously and make a strong working force depends largely on the president.

It always seems to me that no one in the university works quite so hard as the president. His office door bears a legend to the effect that his office hours are fixed within certain limits, but as a matter of fact he finds it necessary to be accessible at all hours. The most successful of the presidents whom I have known here was the one who never seemed in a hurry. Whatever the pressure of business, he always managed to be interested in the person who was talking to him. To a friend who said to him, “But why must you submit to all these interruptions ? ” he replied, “That is one thing that I am here for, to talk and to listen, — chiefly to listen.” In addition to this and the many other qualities which should be possessed by every college president, the president of our state university is required to have some special gifts. Coming in contact, in his university work throughout the state, with men of all classes and of many creeds and more prejudices, he needs to be singularly open-minded and adaptable, and more than all he needs to be sincere. If he has a talent for public speaking, so much the better for him. Westerners adore oratory, and consider it almost more important that there should be a professor to teach their sons how to speak than that there should be professors to train their minds so that they may have something to say. The president is obliged to travel about the state making addresses at high - school Commencements, at Teachers’ Associations, at every kind of educational gathering that ingenuity can devise ; not to speak of festivities at home, such as alumni banquets and the like. His travels over a large state, with railroad connections which might often be more properly termed disconnections, resemble in their vicissitudes those of a missionary bishop, with some advantages on the side of the latter. I once heard the president and the bishop comparing notes. Said the former: —

“What do you do, bishop, when you have only one sheet to your bed ? ”

“ I double it, ” replied the bishop, “and get inside.”

“But suppose they put another man in the same bed ? ”

“That, ” said the bishop, “has n’t yet happened to me.”

These journeys are not optional ; they form a portion of the duties which the president assumes when he accepts his position. He finds it best, however, always to time them so that he can be present at the meetings of the board of regents and of the executive committee. Not only is he far better acquainted than they are with all details of university affairs, but he is the medium of communication between them and the faculty. I am told that here is the rock on which college presidents frequently go to pieces, and that the temptation to be something more than a transparent medium appears to be strong. In our struggling state university the situation is one of extreme delicacy ; for there is little money and there are many departments, each in its own opinion the most needy of all. Everybody’s claims must be considered ; nobody can have exactly what he wants. The president needs to be a singularly fair-minded man.

Some petty annoyances, amusing in the retrospect, are a peculiar feature of the state university, on account of the tendency of the man with a grievance to try to pull political wires ; as when the angry father of a suspended student, arriving by a late train, repairs to the president’s house, and, finding one light still burning, rings the doorbell with such vehemence that the master of the house slips hastily into his clothes again and goes to the door, to be assailed by a demand that the delinquent be reinstated, on pain of a report to the regents, the governor, and the legislature, all of whom, it would seem, are the intimate friends of the outraged parent ; or when an indignant mother, calling slander to her aid, actually tries to set the legislative machinery in motion to crush the administration.

A somewhat more serious matter is the opposition which is occasionally set on foot when circumstances require changes in the faculty. When a professor is asked for his resignation, it depends on himself whether the manner of his taking off is made public. Usually he prefers to leave as quietly as possible, but sometimes he makes a fight. Religious and political influences are brought to bear, very likely a party is formed among the regents, and for a time the issue may seem doubtful. But the president gets his way in the end. Whatever changes he may make, he must always recognize the fact that his faculty will not be perfect. A learned man may not be a good teacher ; a good teacher may have a difficult temperament ; the desirable man may be unwilling to go to a Western university on a small salary ; the superficial man who can do nothing but talk is found everywhere. The president can but do his best.

In the all-important matter of revenue, our state university leads a precarious, hand-to-mouth existence, depending on the favor of the legislature. There was, of course, the original land grant from the United States government ; but in our case, as in too many others, the lands were sold years ago for a song, and that fund brings in a mere pittance. There is a small permanent income from the state ; but for most of the current expenses and all of the buildings and equipments the university must depend on the special appropriations made by the legislature. Increase in attendance means increased need of buildings, equipments, and instructors ; and grow the university does, in spite of its poverty and its enemies. Unfortunately, its enemies are many and powerful. Where the folly of the founders of the university and the state agricultural college has made of them two institutions instead of one, the university finds an enemy in the agricultural college. Thanks to its fund from the United States government, the latter starts out on a better foundation than the university. An agricultural college, as every one knows, is not apt to have many students in agriculture. The farmers’ sons who care to go to college rarely count on going back to the farm. Many of them do go back, after they have failed as lawyers, doctors, or dentists ; and their education has not been time lost if they succeed in raising by ever so little the average of intelligence of the farming class. But they have not swelled the number of students in agriculture. So the agricultural college, besides its elaborate outfit in its own specialties, — its experimental farm, its dairies, its veterinary department, its department of domestic science for women, etc., — must, in order to make any show of students, duplicate the university equipment in all or nearly all of the other departments, and accordingly comes regularly to the legislature with large demands which it urges in a spirit of jealousy of the rival institution.

Every religious denomination which has its own colleges in the state (and they are legion) is also more or less an enemy, and, while asking nothing for itself, has its party in the legislature ready to oppose the university.

All the state institutions — insane hospitals, reform schools, penitentiaries — are also in chronic need of money, which, as a rule, they spend more extravagantly than does the university. Each one is fighting for itself and opposing outlay in any other direction, and each has a contingent of the legislature pledged to support its interests. These members do not favor generosity to the university. Then there are the members who wish to make a record for economy, and those who are swayed by personal animosity, perhaps to a regent, perhaps to the president, perhaps even to a former president. The student of a dozen years before, who was disciplined under a former administration, has been known to bear a grudge and to refuse to vote supplies. The session of the legislature means hard work for the friends of the university. The president is compelled, willy nilly, to be chief lobbyist, and spends day after day and week after week arguing his case, now before a committee, now with individual members ; showing facts and figures, statistics of other state universities, estimates of the requirements of his own ; answering questions, refuting calumnies, exhausting every argument ; then hurrying back to his office and doing double work to make up for lost time, back again to the capital, and so on through the winter.

Usually a visiting committee is sent to look over the university and make a report. The three or five members of the committee may not all come with impartial minds ; that is as it happens. The university asks nothing better than investigation. It is glad of the opportunity. Everything is shown and explained, and the visitors then profess themselves satisfied. They are entertained in the town ; the president invites the professors to meet them. They go away protesting friendship for the university, and saying that they had but to see to be convinced. We are all greatly pleased with ourselves and with them. But when they return to the capital other considerations resume their sway, and very likely one or two of them vote against the university appropriation bill.

The truth is that the legislature is much more interested in the penitentiaries and the reform schools than in the university, and more interested in a reputation for economy than in anything else. Moreover, the title of the agricultural college commends itself to an agricultural community. The university is treated as a stepchild of the state, and receives but a niggardly appropriation. The good day of suitable buildings and equipments, of adequate salaries, of departments properly manned, of a more extended influence, is once more put off. The president comes back to his accumulation of work feeling the sickness of hope deferred, and once more goes through the wearisome task of saying to ambitious young instructors that no promotion with increase of salary can be looked for, and to overworked professors that they cannot have the assistants whom they need, or the apparatus which they can hardly do without, or the accommodations which seem absolutely essential ; that, in short, for yet another two years sixpence must do the work of a shilling.

Yet they join hands with a good will and go on with their work with undiminished energy. For they are still hopeful. Each legislature, they assure me, is more intelligent than the last ; each appropriation, though sadly inadequate, is a little larger ; each year more graduates of the university are finding their way both into the legislature and into the board of regents. The alumni societies are making themselves felt. The university is raising its own standards and the standards of the secondary schools. It is drawing after it the sectarian colleges, which must either follow its lead or drop into the position of preparatory schools. The state university is alive, and it has a future.

An Athenian.