Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1879-01-31
BARN BURNING !?

The State Agricultural and Mechanical
College at Blacksburg is an institution in
which the people that do most of the i'm
provement of Virginia, and upon whose
minds and hands that Improvement chiefly
depends, take peculiar interest. 1t is the
only one dedicated to education in the
state at which the features Of agriculture
and mechanics are made conspicuously
prominent and it is natural that about its
management and its success the people
should be peculiarly sensitive. 1t appears
that what are indefinitely called s'difficul-
ties'' have arisen there, about the nature
of which however the public are almost
totally ignorant, and to cure these intir-
mites bill has been reported in the
legislature, the main feature OF which
closely resembles that remedy for rats
adopted by the farmer who burned his
barn as the most effective means of getting
rid of them. The bill as we view it pro-
poses to sweep off the entire Board of visi-
tors and Faculty and make fresh start.
The latter determin alton Of this heroic
remedy-the fresh start, is commendable.
but we venture to suggest that the whole
sale and tndiscriminate action suggested
in reference to the changes has few if any
precedents in state legislation. If there is
any precedent, and we are not aware that
there is, it must have grown out of more
extraordinary state Of affairs than has been
shown to exist at this college-we say has
been shown because we as well as the pub
lie are quite ignorant of what has trans
pired to provoke such summary action. Ii
it has been the privilege of a few to fall
into possession of facts justifying it, they
should be made public, as public as the
tax which the people contribute to the sup
port of the institution. We take it that
their character for sagacity, ability, fit
ness and the other requisites for filing their
positions is held to be Of some value by the
members of the Board of visitors and the
Faculty and an indiscriminate removal
can only suggest to an astonished but in
auisitive public that in the present in
stance no such character exists at all OF in
such diminutive quantity as not to en-
title the claimant to the slightest con-
sideration.
The college is essentially peoples COL
lege. Of all the similar institutions in all
the States of the Union, founded on the
congressional land fund, this one remains
among the five or six which have not
failed. Though not possessing the meas
IRE of financial aid its successful COM
panions have received it is not excelled by
any of the others, and by several is not
euualIed. There are some of the members
of the Board, we presume, who have
served large portion of their time dur
ing this advance of the college, and lis
President and large portion OF the Fac
nlty have been in place since its founda-
ton. and we think the statement will be
unauestioned, that they must, in the ma
ture of the case, have had much to do
with success which, whether IN greater
or less measure, is conceded fact. The
dismissal of such men without the best of
reasons would be unbusiness-like, unproit-
able to the State. injurious to the college,
and unsteadying to a current OF the public
mind that has set in toward the practical
education of the youth of the rural dis
tricts, and become so strong that to-
day the catalogue of the Blacksburg Col
lege shows that more citizens of Virgins
ue seeking the education of their sons
there than at any single institution in the
State, nor excepting even The University
The clean sweep of the bill we alludt
to has a smack of autocracy and despot-
ism about it not popular. 1t is mode
which would grow by precedent and here
after be easily used by this or that con
tending faction or set to gain control OF
the institutions in which the State at
large is interested. We are confident thai
the House will do best to reject the pre-
sent bill, and that the House Committee
can report better one, which will do IN
justice to none.