Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1899-07-01
Are CoIIeae Students Degenerating?

entirely false impression of the college
boy of the present day. Some people
who would know much better if they
stopped to reason a moment proclaim
that college students are degenerating,
that they have lost the courtesy which
marked the former generation, and
that rowdyism has a place among the
other isms of the curriculum. OF
issue the Turf, Farm and Home has
interesting communications from our
Maine college presidents, men who
know what they are talking about
every time, and their testimony on this
point is worth noting.
President Hyde of Bowdoin. dis
misses the subject very briefly, evil
IDENTIFY thinking that a question to
which only one answer is possible, is
not worth much discussion. He says
that those who know the least about
school and college discipline are most
WILING u cTltlclZt anu tdlk dDout II.
President Butler of Colby says: Re
spending to your polite invitation to
ence to the assumed deterioration of
life in our colleges, l beg to say that
l believe the assumption itself to be
radically an error. The praiser of
times gone by is always with us, and
periodically his voice is heard in the
land. His part is one that is easy to
play, for the evils of our own times
are very present to our consciousness,
while what has survived from former
But no one intimately acquainted with
the internal life of American colleges
for the last so years. can doubt for a
moment the proposition that there has
been a steady moral and social ad-
vance in the life of these institutions
This. certainly, is confirmed by my
recollection of undergraduate life in
my own college days.
The censorious critic of college life
should bear in mind that never in the
history of our country have so many
students been enrolled in these insttu-
there We're hardly hundreds 80 years
ago. He should also bear irl~mind that
month after month passes by with no
ripple in the good order and no depart
ure from the good citizenship of the
students. In every community. no
matter how far advanced in Christian
ity and civilization. there will be found
one or two rude fellows of the baser
sort" who lag behind the general social
can be appealed to only by the police
mans club and the county Jail But
it is neither reasonable nor just to gen
eraliZe from their rare and isolated
acts to the whole mass. We had a
shocking murder case in our vicinity
not many months ago. That did not
lead us. however. to suppose that our
whole community is composed of out
laws.
Rules and penalties are not so much
heard of nowadays as they used to be.
This is true of the home and the city,
as we'll as the college. That is be-
cause the tone of citizenship has risen.
and there seems to be a more general
disposition to work together between
officers and the people. In college
towns this is manifest in the great
change which has come over the three
elements that compose such commune
ties, namely-citizens. the college Off
GERS, and the students. Formerly, these
constituted elements either entirely
different or openly hostile to each other.
Today there is the utmost good feeling
holding these three social elements in
sympathy. Further evidence of the
social and moral advance in student
life is found in the fact that although
college representatives from the pail
and athletic teams and in the debating
clubs, travel freely over the country.
one almost never hears of any disor-
derby conduct on the part of these men
on trains or steamers"
President Harris of the University of
Maine, says that college men are go
ing forward. not backward in all that
makes up the man. In anyone thinks
the tendency is the other way, the
change is in him and not in the stu
dent He says: when l was a little
child my mother seemed very tall; now
she would seem like a short woman.
College professors do not seem to me
half 50 wonderful, or great. or dignified
as when | was a freshman, and yet |
think they have not been forgetting
during all these years. l have an
uncle who seemed to be in middle life
when l was II. He was then about %.
Since then we have been growing to-
ward the same age. until we are now