# Discipline and the Derelict (collection)/The Politician

I had not been long in college before I learned that political parties and political organizations, and politicians are quite as evident among college undergraduates, and are considered quite as necessary as they are among the voters of a commonwealth. There were few students in attendance when I entered college, but it took me only a few weeks to see that political lines were as closely drawn in that little community as in state or national affairs, and that if I desired political, and to some extent social, advancement I must ally myself with one side or the other. The literary societies were the dominant political parties at this time, and the one that I joined was in control of the political power of the institution. I should not have admitted the fact at that time, but in all probability its political prestige was one of the deciding factors in determining my choice, for I had myself more than a passing interest in politics. My political future was therefore assured. No one got a place on the college newspaper or the class annual or on class committees unless he had a stand-in with the political party, alias the literary society that was in power. It was scarcely ever a case of fitness for the office, although within limits fitness may have been considered—it was rather a case of who your friends were and how well they were organized. Charlie Gibson was no doubt very much better fitted to he editor of the college paper, than ​was Lin Wilbur, but Charlie had few supporters and fewer admirers of his talents, and he belonged to the wrong political party, so that settled his case. I remember that Lin told me with some chagrin that when he was approached by his friends who asked him to become a candidate, the spokesman of the party said, "It isn't because you are the best man, Lin, that we are asking you to run, but because you can be elected." The organization was simple, but it was effective; we were able to predict two or three years ahead who would hold the important offices, and we scarcely ever missed it, nor do the politicians of to-day.
I was talking not long ago with one of the old timers who was deploring the fact that things have changed so completely since he was in college, and, from his point of view, changed for the worse. The fraternities, he said, had come in and had undermined the influence and work of the literary societies which, he averred, had done so much to train men to think and to speak effectively. I pointed out to him that the former supposed province of the literary societies had been usurped by the English department and that in reality the literary societies in his time and in mine were the most carefully organized political machines extant; that they would have made a present-day democratic central committee ashamed of its crude work, and further that the fraternities were simply playing in an amateurish and weak way the political game that the literary societies had taught them. I cited a few things to him that had occurred while he was in college, and after he had thought these over a short time, he decided that per​haps things were not so bad now as he had supposed, and that the political game is as old as time. It was worked as skillfully when Jacob organized the home forces and "rimmed" Esau out of his birthright as it is to-day.
Politics in college are not run very differently from city politics, or state politics. As the college increases in size the organization must become more complex, the difficulties of control grow greater, and more genius in leadership is required. A friend of mine who, during his senior year, had been elected to the position of president of the athletic association of one of the large Middle West state universities said to me that the planning and organization of his campaign for this office required more thought and work than was later necessary to get him elected to the state legislature from his home district, on the Republican ticket, in a Democratic community.
If one desires to be elected to any general office in a large university he must make his plans early. I am more and more astonished when I am brought to appreciate how early they must be made. I have no doubt, for instance, that at this moment the political forces in the sophomore class of the University of Illinois are fully organized, and that the plans are all made, the candidates all chosen, and many of the appointments to committees decided upon for the management of the class when they shall have reached senior standing. The unexpected events which always occur even in the best of family and political organizations will necessitate numerous changes in these plans, no doubt, but I am quite sure that such plans are already formed.
​So far as my information and experience goes, every institution, large or small, has its politicians who control, in a more or less complete way, undergraduate affairs and undergraduate offices. Sometimes they do it well; sometimes very much to the contrary. If the authorities of any college think this is not true in the institution with which they are connected, I am convinced that they have not probed under the surface of undergraduate activities. To hold the strings that may be pulled, to shuffle the cards in order that one may get a good hand, to try to get into a position of control or of preferment is as natural and as human in college, and out for some people, as to look out for three meals a day.
In college, as out of it, the successful politician is always a part of a well-knit organization. This organization may be an open and a recognized one acting under a given name and with college authority, or it may be an unauthorized and informal one, unknown to the general community. It may be the literary societies, it may be the fraternities, or it may be some democratic organization whose ostensible purpose is to oppose organizations in general, but no man ever got very far politically or in a business way without building up around him some sort of machine. The secret organizations about most colleges whose membership is discreetly kept under the rose, are for the most part political, though their adherents claim strenuously that politics never enter into their deliberations. One of the most carefully organized political machines in the institution of which I am a member has regularly held that political machinations are unknown within its member​ship, yet it manages every year to name most of the successful candidates for office and to control most of the undergraduate affairs which have connected with them either profit or honor. The only explanation of why members of Greek letter fraternities, in most of the colleges in which they exist, hold much more than their proportionate share of class offices and political jobs in general is because these men are organized, and so have little trouble in getting their men by. The man in an organization comes to expect appointment or election merely because he belongs to an organization, and the public very often comes, also, to expect the same thing.
I have not thought it necessary to explain, excepting by implication, what I mean by politician and politics. What I do mean by politician as related to college is the man who through diplomacy and finesse and conscious planning and organization gets control of undergraduate affairs, decides who shall run for class president, who shall be editor of the college daily, who shall be chairman of the Junior Prom committee, and who shall run whatever in student affairs needs running—in short the man who in the college community is the power behind the throne. The mayor of a city is not necessarily the most influential man in the conduct of municipal affairs; in many cases he is merely a figurehead who was chosen by the real politicians of the community to be a foil for their schemes and plans. So, too, in college. The recent president of one of our sophomore classes was in no sense prominent or influential. He was picked for the place by the real leaders who got him elected and who told him what to do, ​and who selected his committees for him and planned the class functions without reference to his views or his comfort or pleasure. It would not be unlikely that they even told him what young woman he was to take to the Cotillion. He was in no sense a politician; he was simply a tool who was managed by politicians, who are the real bosses of every community.
The politician in college is a man upon whom there are many responsibilities if he will assume them. He is restricted, it is true, in his movements and in his opportunities for exploitation, by conventions, by college traditions, and by precedent, but even these if he is bold and aggressive he may often over-ride. Through long years of practice there have come to be somewhat rigidly established in every college, even though there are no fixed rules in print, customs, and expense rates, and recognized methods of procedure which one finds it difficult to deviate from. But even circumscribed by these the man in general control of undergraduate affairs has things pretty much his own way in the direction and management of the social life of the college, the general activities of classes, the policies and control of publications, dramatics, and all the other activities with which students are concerned. Sometimes he keeps his hands out of athletics, but the illustration is not far to seek where even in the determination of athletic affairs the politician has not been averse to determining what should be done, and who should be selected to do it. The larger the institution the more likely he is to attempt universal control of affairs.
​All this is not so simple nor so innocent as it might at first seem. In an institution that numbers its students by the thousands any man in prominence in undergraduate activities is responsible directly or indirectly for the expenditure of considerable sums of money. In any one of a score of our prominent institutions, for instance, the chairman of the committee in charge of any large dance, conservatively speaking, has control of the expenditure of at least a thousand dollars. The chairman of the senior invitation committee last year at the University of Illinois expended two or three thousand dollars. The manager of a modern college daily may easily have pass through his hands during one year eight or ten thousand dollars, and in most cases these officers are appointed by the class president or elected by undergraduate vote. Often, then, appointments come purely as rewards for political loyalty, for standing by the candidate for office. More often than otherwise such positions are plums thrown down to the friends below who have given the aspirant for office a leg up the political tree. The amount of money which in these days is directly under the control of the college politician is rather startling when we come to sum up the total. Its control, it is true, is not infrequently reasonably well safe-guarded by college rules and college supervision, but even the most careful supervision has its loopholes which the shrewd undergraduate is not slow to discover, and not always averse to slipping through.
It is the man in control of undergraduate affairs, too, who ultimately makes customs, who establishes traditions, who determines ideals, good or bad, for ​those with whom he works, or for those who come after him. I had a talk only a few weeks ago with the chairman of one of our underclass committees. The committee, which was a pretty large one with duties which were quite trifling (to select caps for the sophomore class), had been appointed in the early spring. Because of unusual conditions, it had not had a meeting, had done no business, and was not likely to do any. The topic of discussion between us was a rather extravagant bill for stationery for the use of this committee. The argument of the committee chairman in brief was that though no business had been transacted and though none would be transacted by the committee, the members were entitled to such trifling spoils as stationery, because by merely representing the class in an official way they had earned something, and because stationery had from time immemorial been a perquisite of class committees. He was not concerned with the fact that some one would have to pay for it or that his committee had rendered no real service. It had rendered a worthy service, he held, by allowing itself to be appointed. I do not know whether or not he was a member of that distinguished political party which was first responsible for the doctrine, but he was quite convinced of the justice embodied in the statement "To the victors belong the spoils."
In any community, civil or collegiate, there are not many politicians. Most people are indifferent to these things,—they are not interested in them. I am surprised and annoyed over and over again to find how indifferent they are. Ninety per cent. of the college community are indifferent as to who ​has charge of undergraduate affairs One candidate, to most men, looks as good as another. It takes the thunders and the eruptions of a political campaign to stir up the layman, and often even these have little effect on him. "I don't care who is elected, just so they let me alone," is the common cry in college and out of it. Most people are glad to have the other fellow run things, provided they are themselves not disturbed or called upon to help in the running—otherwise the politician would have a more difficult time than he now does. Few, also, are willing to give the time that it takes to be a successful politician, for the majority of undergraduate students are conscientious and give their main time and thought to their studies, the general opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. There is no doubt but that it takes an unconscionable amount of time to manage political matters. Those who go into our national political life usually find that they have no time left for any other business, and so the college man finds—if he is a successful politician—and his term grades usually suffer. His scholastic salvation is found only in the fact that few undergraduates begin their political career until after they have learned how to manage their studies, so that after they go in for politics they carry their work on their former reputation. In these matters, again, the college politician differs little from his more experienced brother out in the world.
Speaking of the time it requires for a man with political aspirations to accomplish his purposes, brings to my mind the case of a student who at the beginning of his junior year conceived the idea of ​securing the position of editor of the college daily in his senior year. The office was a profitable and a prominent one; it carried with it a remuneration sufficient adequately to meet all his expenses during his last year in college, and it made him almost certain of election to the senior society—an honor which most college students rate very highly. The office at that time was obtained through a general vote of the student body, and the election came late in May. From the opening of college in the fall this ambitious politician pursued his strenuous political campaign. Every day of the week excepting Sunday—he devoted several hours to making acquaintances, and building his political fences. He visited students' rooms, he met students on the street, he buttonholed them on the campus. Before the end of spring he had built a political fortress that was impregnable, and he had personally seen in his own interests every one of the thousands of voters on the campus. Then when the election was on and he was just about ready to begin to pass out the party rewards, he found that his studies were in such condition that he was not eligible for election. He had, however, accumulated a considerable amount of experience, political and otherwise, and I have no doubt could hardly consider the time wholly wasted, even if he did lose the election; but few students would be willing to give so much time or could afford to give it, for the sake of winning any college office, and no college office with which I am familiar is worth the sacrifice of time which he made.
One of the regrettable things about college politics is that real merit so often counts for little. Fitness ​for the office is too often little considered if considered at all. Popularity, prominence, availability, and, more than all of these, frequently, manageability are the qualities which bring a man success in the political game in college. The most popular man in college is the successful athlete. Youth, both feminine and masculine, will continue to admire physical beauty and physical accomplishments no matter how vigorously we who are older and more experienced may eulogize intellectual power. The military conflict through which we have passed will not tend to dim the glory of the hero in physical combat, and will intensify this sort of hero worship in the minds of college youths generally.
Though the athlete in college, if he does not neglect his athletic business, is the worst possible candidate for official position or political activity because, on account of the exactions of his sport, he has no time to give to such things, yet, since he is so constantly and so favorably in the public eye, he can with less personal effort be elected to office, and so is frequently tempted through ambition and vanity to make the race. It is a safe conclusion, however, that the athlete in office, whether the position be chairman of the hat committee or president of the Young Men's Christian Association, is there primarily for advertising purposes, and will do little work and do the office little credit. The fact that he is entitled to it, as he so frequently claims, seldom gives him the feeling that he is also under the most serious obligations to fulfill the duties of the office which he has assumed.
Prominence of any sort is almost equally sure to help a man in college toward political success. If ​an undergraduate has attained success in any line of endeavor, excepting in intellectual lines which nowhere, in the world, so far as I know, gives a man any political prestige, he is at once thought of as fit to be at the head of one undergraduate activity or another. The debater in some localities has vogue, the society man can not be wholly overlooked, and the "good fellow," whatever that may mean, is almost next in prominence to the athlete.
The man who can play both ends against the middle is a likely candidate. If one is popular with his own party and does not arouse antagonism in the other, he is often thought the most available candidate because he is most likely of election without a hard fight, and no politician likes a hard fight if victory may be gained easily. The ease with which a man may be managed is often an important factor in his selection as a candidate for office.
Very often an innocent, pliable, harmless person is selected because nothing particular can be said against him, and he has so little independence that when he is inducted into office the real politicians will have no difficulty in inducing him to back their schemes. There is in reality, it may be said, a considerable political advantage in this sort of candidate at times, for he has attracted so little attention from the authorities beforehand that through his instrumentality many things can be done quietly which would be suspected and detected in a better known and a more independent man. The worst political gang I ever knew in college always were able to point with virtuous pride to their candidates in whose personal record it was seldom possible to find a flaw. It ​is not enough to know who is running for office or who is holding office, but rather who is behind him, who is managing him, if one expects to control the situation.
There is a growing feeling among college politicians, I am sorry to say, that whatever activity an undergraduate engages in he is entitled to some tangible return. In my own undergraduate days election to office or appointment to membership on a committee was in itself considered an honor and a distinction which more than compensated for the work or effort necessary in the performance of the duty assigned. Now everything is different. The candidate's first question is, "What is there in it?" Now the man who considers whether or not he will become a candidate for office or accept a position on a committee is quite likely to view the whole proceeding from the standpoint of personal profit. Sometimes this profit is expected to be in hard cash; at other times it takes the form of passes, of tickets to entertainments, of free stationery, or free cabs, or free stamps. Many office-holders do not get their fingers far into the bag, but they are not satisfied to play the political game and hold office for the mere sport of playing; there must be a small stake at least. Even the man who helps a fellow student to election by voting for him expects something. Last year I was speaking to one of our class presidents who ran unopposed for the office. It seemed to me that he was making his class committees (all of whom would receive some gratuities for their services or supposed services) too large for any reason.
"Why do you do it?" I asked.
​"They all helped me pretty faithfully in my election campaign," he replied.
"You didn't need help," I protested; "you would have been elected no matter if they had not worked, for there was no rival candidate."
"But there would have been," he said, flushing, "if I had not given them to understand that, if elected, I would take care of them satisfactorily."
It is quite safe to say that the college politician would seldom be moved in his selection of a cabinet of helpers and advisers by any appeal as to their fitness and experience. He does not pay much attention to his rivals, no matter what their claims to merit may be, when it comes to the partitioning out of offices or committee jobs. Any one who is familiar with the political complexion of a college community could pick ninety per cent. of the appointees to office if he were told who the appointing officer is.
"I want to appoint the best man in college to be chairman of the invitation committee," an upper class president said to me not long ago.
"The most reliable man you could choose is Briggs, whom you defeated in the election," I suggested.
"What would my friends think of me if I appointed him?" he asked.
"They'd think you had independence and nerve, and you ought to be able to stand that," I replied. But he had neither.
The most comforting part of all my years of experience and acquaintance with college politicians is the fact that every year I find the man who has inde​pendence, who is not willing to be managed, who does not approve of political chicanery, and who disappoints and surprises the friend who expected to profit from his election.
Not long ago a young junior came to me to get my opinion as to his fitness for the position of president of one of our important student organizations.
"You'd be a poor man for the place," I said to him frankly. "You are not aggressive, you are not independent, and the men behind you are lacking in the right political principles."
"I think I'll surprise you," he said, and he did. He succeeded in the election, and before he graduated I wrote him that I considered him the best officer his organization had ever had. He was punctilious in the performance of the duties of his office, and these were not few. He would not be managed, he would not tolerate irregularity or dishonesty, and when his friends shirked the obligations of the positions to which he had appointed them, they were supplanted by other men who were willing to do the work well. He was quiet, apparently unaggressive, but firm, shrewd, and honest. I never knew whether or not my adverse criticism stimulated him to do his best, but I do know that I wish every college had more undergraduate officials like him.
Another similar illustration occurs to me. The man in question was chosen to run for president of the senior class because it was taken for granted that he would handle affairs to the financial advantage of his friends. He allowed himself to be supported in his political campaign by the most untrustworthy politicians on the campus. After his election he ​called his appointees together and very frankly told them that he recognized the fact that he had been elected because a number of people who had supported him expected to profit by his supposed crookedness. He was sorry so completely to disappoint his friends who had trusted him, he said, but he had determined when selected to run for office to stand for no graft and no dishonesty. He would expose any one whom he caught engaged in any shady action. If he had appointed any one who did not care to work under these circumstances that person might resign. There were no resignations, and there was an absolutely clean administration. The chairman of the invitation committee told me afterward that a representative of an eastern engraving company offered him one hundred and fifty dollars in cash if the chairman would place the order for the invitation with his company. "I knew that the president would not stand for it," he said, "even if I had been willing to do so, and I turned him down and placed the order with another company."
The party fealty of specific organizations about a campus is usually unbelievably strong. For twenty years or more the same organizations with us have been ranged against each other on every political issue that has come up. We have always been morally certain that if the Phi Delts voted for a candidate the Phi Gams would be to a man against him. Organization members have seldom voted as individuals; they have voted as the organization determined, and the organization usually determined to stand with the party whose cause they had regularly espoused. The chief argument that I have ever heard ​for the establishment and continuance of inter-fraternity organizations is that such affiliations bring men of various fraternities together, that they widen acquaintanceships, undermine prejudices, and break down party lines. I think it does widen a man's acquaintances for him to belong to such an organization or organizations, but as for affecting his prejudices or in any way influencing his party affiliations, I think the inter-fraternity organization with us has not had the slightest influence. No matter how many friends a man may have made through these outside relationships, when it comes to voting he stays with his old party. I have known one or two men who refused to vote for a fraternity or party brother who was running for office, but such instances are so rare as to make the individual guilty of such independent thinking seem almost freakish.
The great body of undergraduates and the vast majority of the faculty have given little thought to the power and influence of the political leader in college even if they have gone so far as to recognize his existence. He, far more than the teacher of ethics, is responsible for the moral and intellectual ideals of undergraduates. He has an immeasurable influence over the undergraduate attitude toward graft, toward integrity in business, toward virtue and cleanness of life, and he is on a level with his student companion and talks to him directly and in a language which he can understand. I have seen the spirit of the whole undergraduate body disturbed and changed through the influence of one man; I have seen vicious undergraduate customs set aside and almost completely wiped out in the same way.
​A few years ago the University was torn from one end to the other by the practice of hazing. Nothing else did the institution so much damage, for it angered the supporters of the institution and bade fair to undermine and divert their interest. The legislature was not willing to give its support to an institution in which such a practice prevailed. The chief stimulus to hazing was the posting by members of the sophomore class, followed by a similar action by members of the freshman class, of certain inflammatory proclamations which stirred the members of the two under classes and brought them into personal contact with each other. This distributing of the proclamations was done very quickly and very secretly at night, without announcement, so that it proved extremely difficult to catch the perpetrators. I used always to have a sort of premonition as to when the fray would begin, but there was nothing certain.
It occurred to me one fall that I would get at the leaders. The president of the sophomore class was a shrewd fellow not likely himself to get into trouble and quite sure to direct his forces in any combat from a safe vantage ground. I called him in and explained to him the whole situation, and the effect which hazing was having upon the growth and progress of the University.
"I haven't done any hazing, and I will give you my word that I will not personally put out any proclamations," he said quietly.
"I believe you," I answered, "but you know very fully who has done the hazing, and you know equally well when and by whom the proclamations are to be ​posted. You can control both; you are the recognized leader of the sophomore class. You must exercise your control. If the proclamations go up this year, and if the hazing continues I'll hold you responsible." He said nothing more, nor did I. The proclamations were not posted, and the hazing ceased, and in fact it was scarcely ever revived again. The politician killed it. I could multiply illustrations indefinitely to show how the recognized leaders in college, or those real leaders who are quite as frequently unrecognized, have changed customs, have controlled difficult situations, have promulgated the loosest or the most rigid principles.
The opportunity of the college politician for good or for evil is almost unlimited. He is a far more vital force in the college community, because, he is so often an unseen or an unrecognized force in determining the morals and the ideals of the student body, than is the Young Men's Christian Association, or the whole body of student pastors, strong and helpful as the influences of these instrumentalities are.
The college official who is held responsible for discipline or for the control of student activities and who does not keep in the closest touch with college politicians, who does not make friends with them and try to understand their machinations will be likely to get on badly. When trouble is brewing he will have no premonitions; when it comes he will be likely to be in ignorance of its source. So long as he can lay a restraining, or a directing hand upon the college politician he has solved the most of his problems of discipline and of student control. If trouble ​impends, he will know where to look for it; if it fails he knows who is responsible and who can correct it, for the college politician dominates student sentiments and student activities.