Academic Courtesies

WITHIN a comparatively short time I have had two enlightening experiences which may interest your readers.

I shall permit myself to preface these experiences by the statement that I belong to the happy class of professors, that I am middle-aged, and that I have spent all, or peu s’en faut, of my professional life in a coeducational university.

I may add incidentally that I am a woman.

The stage-setting for experience number one is a city in provincial and benighted Spain.

It chanced one day that I had to go to the university library to copy a manuscript. I went early in order to be there at the ten o’clock opening of the doors. When I entered the vestibule I found it full of men and boys of every description. There were beardless lads waiting to finish the sensational French story begun yesterday. There were ragged, dirty, unshaven men shivering from the night cold which was still in their bones, pushing their way to a place that meant more warmth than was promised by the gray sunless day. There were a few students and some scholars. All were crowded about the iron grating. I gave a hasty glance around and saw that there were no women, so I stood back, not relishing the prospect of mingling with that unsavory mob.

A blear-eyed attendant came to unlock the grating. At that moment some one spied me and cried out, ‘The señora first.’ I looked and saw hands gesticulating and beckoning, and a passageway was made. Almost before I knew it I was inside the library, and a gallant, exceedingly shabby gentleman was conducting me to the guardian of manuscripts. When I had finished my copying an attendant asked me if there was anything else he could do for me. I ventured to ask if I might visit some classes. He showed no surprise, but took me immediately to a gentlemanly person who accompanied me to a classroom and introduced me to the professor at the desk. Neither curiosity nor self consciousness was shown by the students, although no foreign woman had visited the university within their memory. My presence as a visitor was treated with the simplicity and naturalness of perfect courtesy.

Later I was visiting some of our American universities and colleges of the Atlantic States. Many years had passed since I had last seen them, and the interval had been crowded with impressions of foreign institutions. It was with peculiar and patriotic pleasure that I found myself deeply moved by the dignified beauty and academic charm of our own colleges. ‘We have known how to borrow all that is best from the old world,’ thought I proudly, ‘and have adapted it to our own ideas of progress and liberty. The courts and cloisters, the gothic arch and the colonial column are indicative of our reverence for tradition and culture. The laboratory, the gymnasium, the wide stretch of campus and the spacious athletic field are indicative of our larger conceptions of life, of our breadth of mind, of our freedom from prejudice.’

In some such form I expressed my thoughts to the courteous professor who chanced to be my escort at one of the larger men’s colleges. He beamed sympathetically, and later said, ‘ What else would you like to see?’ With a sigh of content and anticipation, I replied, ‘Now I’d like to visit some of the classes.’

He looked startled, then embarrassed, hesitated a moment and said, ‘I’m afraid the fellows would n’t stand for that.’

I was puzzled.

‘The fellows?’ I asked.

‘Yes, the students. You see they might start to stamping and cat-calling if a lady came into the lecture-room, and that would break up the class.’

It seemed incredible. That I, a middle-aged, sober, respectable professor, could not visit a class studying a subject in which I was particularly interested without creating a riot. And this because— thank God! — I chanced to be a woman. Was I really in America, in the twentieth century?

The broad campus seemed to shrink to provincial proportions, and prejudice narrowed the noble outlines of the buildings. It was incredible! This was surely an isolated instance. This college was perhaps peculiarly unsusceptible to broadening influences. I would try somewhere else. I did try, in four segregated male colleges, and everywhere I met with the same answer. Every other hospitality was shown, but that one thing which I most wanted, which had been the real object of my trip, the observation of the teaching of my own subject, this was denied me. After I had fully grasped the situation, the humor of it filled me with deep, silent laughter. How childish we still are, even in our educational institutions! To what queer little quirks and contradictions are we subject! How complacently we deck ourselves in a wornout prejudice only to realize suddenly that it is worn out and that we are naked.

But I remember Spanish courtesy with honest gratitude.