The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-12-08
ACADEMIC DRESS CONTRARY TO
THE SPIRIT OF UNIVERSAL
EDUCATION.

EDUCATION.
At the exercises attending the in
auguration of DR.. w. l.. Poteat at
Wake Forest yesterday, the eminent
men and educators who participated
were dressed IKE well-to-do and self
respecting American citizens.
And no one of the large crowd that
was in attendance could say that the
occasion was in any respect lacking in
dignity.
What is dignity, anyway, except the
proper compartment of a man in rela-
ton to his position in the community
as he himself has made it? Dignity
is a personal thing, generally recog-
nized. It cannot be manufactured
put on or taken off. It's attempted as
sumption by a man who has it not is
a mere accumulation of such buffoonery
as, perchance, is an element of his
composition. Dignity is poise and con-
fidence and independence. 1t is like
wise restraint and modesty. Above
all does it consist in the right to de-
mand, in fellowship with men and
through worth of achievement and
character, the place to which 1t is en-
titled Yet the demand should never
be voiced. 1t lives in the right to
the place Dignity is conferred and
never taken; it loses itself in the eff
fort of requirement. Never, by any
'rirance,~ can it be manufactured out of
clothes. Good taste is dress lies in an
elegant inconspicuousness 1t is much
the same with the quality which IL
called dignity. 1t must fit the man and
not display him. He cannot wear II
except with an unconscious air.
That is lesson which experience
has taught. In the learning of tbs
lesson. the world has come more and
more to do away with the fantastic
The time of plumes and beaded doub-
let's and silver buckles for men has
gone forever. They exist no longer
except as the trappings of decaying
tyranny They are, in themselves, Il
badge of slavery. They presume
kin~ or d fetish of the mind or a dog
ma of the soul which is more finely
dressed than they. whose inferior inn
itations they are. Peculiarly in
They signify the meaningless class,
the special favorites of birth or wealth
or power or sect. In America the one
principle that it worth anything in the
life of the nation is that any mali
may look in his destiny for the star
of any possibility. How futile that
one, for the sake of an accomplish
ment open to all, should brag about it
in dress! If what he has done is worth
anything, he will be seen and noted for
it. If, in the exercise of his opportu,
mites, he has failed he cannot hope
to avert indifference by purchasing
notice by the yard.
This country is of the people. With
that reason we cannot see aught save
lack of the sense of proportion In
the attempt to create a class or official
distinction by dress A gown on a
Judge gives his opinion no weight and
adds not a title to the esteem in which
he is held. A cap and gown on an
educator or a student is so palpable a
weakness as even to tend to compro-
mise the virtue of attainment or ambi-
ton.
AS DR.. Poteat truly says, academic
dress is survival which is contrary
to the new and liberal spirit of edu-
cation 1t might do in the days when
only gentlemen born were allowed to
read and write, and when the weight
of government was thrown in the
scales lest the gentlemen class become
too popular. Now the trend is the
other way around. Education, more
than anything else of good, is of the
people. It's future lies with the mass.
The college is an uplifter, instead of
a nursery of favored clique Again.
as DR.. Poteat says, its aim should
be to touch the multitude at the
greatest number of points. Let the
people begin to associate a college
man with gown and a cap with a
tassel and the college will lose in an
appreciable measure the general res
pect to which it is winning with the
mass of citizens Let the student at
the college twitch his skirts with a
delighted and supercilious sense of his
and he is already be-
ginning to make the sacriflce which
he represents vain and useless thing.
The college aim is to send its grad