Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1910-09-23
MlDDLEBURY COLLEGE.
CONTINUED from Page IL

CONTINUED from Page IL
west, with regard to the relation of an
institution of higher learning to the
broad community in which it is located
and the commonwealth which gives it
its charter. 1t is coming to be perceived
that college, every college, is public
institution of the State which charters
it. Its property, both personal and real
is exempt from all public taxation by
specific statute. The Supreme Court of
this State has ru ed that an endowed
institution of learning with self-per-
petuating board of trustees may claim
such exemption, because both its prop
erty and the income derived from it are
devoted to public use. Such a priv
| ilege can not exist without consequent
obligations. If a college is a public
institution, its duty is to serve the pub
lie. 1t may not consult its fancy merely
as to what type of studies it shall en-
courage and what sort of graduate it
shall try to turn out. 1t must inquire
what kind of men are needed and seek
to produce them. 1t must give its
earnest thought to the conditions of life
in its environment, industrial, social,
educational, and moral, and so order its
| WOIh DIS W MAKE d worthy
| to the betterment of that life.
For example, our Department of Ped
agogy is in direct discharge of our duty
scheme for getting little more money,
nor ameans whereby we can attract more
students for the glory of the college.
Doubtless by its means our graduates
will be able to secure better positions,
but it must not be administered for that
purpose primarily, but for the uplift of
educational conditions throughout this
| State. 1t is a better Vermont we are
| working for, not the selfish interests of
our students.
The influence of this new spirit upon
the temper and tone of the life of the
college is bound to be very great. The
spirit of service is an ennobling and
sanctifying spirit. 1t destroys the pas
sions to which the old-time evils of
humanity make their appeal. 1t enlists
the worthier activities of manhood and
imparts strength unto moral victories.
look for the purifying and elevating
of the entire atmosphere of the college
through the new passion for uplift
which is bound to take possession of our
college men and women.
AS social organism the college has
a spirit all its own and certain general
conviction of the quality of manhood
which should belong to all its members.
This college public opinion is somewhat
erratic and inconsistent. In certain re-
spects it possesses merit of a high
order. do not know of any environ
ment in which boy can be cured of
pride and conceit, or healed of obstinacy
and mulishness, more quickly than in
college, and that without direction or
encouragement from the faculty. There
are some forms of selfshness which can
not endure in a college community.
The youth who will not be cured simply
can not stay. But while certain fail
pings are keenly perceived and heroically
treated, others are unobserved and un-
doing her own washing that he may
continue in college will buy a 25 cent
package of cigarettes every day, and if
he is good athlete he may be carried
in triumph from the field, whereas he
ought to be carried to the creek and
made to do washing for the whole col
lege.
1t is clear that general college senti-
ment can not altogether be trusted in
the determination of good and evil.
The danger is that an incoming student
will adopt what he ought not to adopt,
and refuse what he ought not to refuse.
The only safety is in ones good sense,
with attention to the distinction be-
tween the trivial and innocent and that
which is really vicious.
One fact should be fixed clearly in
mind, and that is that the ten COM
mandments hold good in college. There
is not one moral law for college stu.
dents and another for the world out.
side. The precepts which you learned
as children are not cancelled by your
naturalization, and in any confusion OF
conscience it is well to bark back to
your original convictions concerning
right and stand like rock
1t is well to have a few command
ments or prohibitions for which one
does not give reason, but which are
based on sentiment, or veneration for
those who have held to them. | like t.
see man with few prejudices in his
morals, particularly if those prejudices
act in the direction of stringency.
know a man who will not smoke in the
parlor where his mother used to sit
because she did not like to have him.
The man is now sole master of the
house, and the mother has been deac
for years, but on cold winter night he
will sit on the piazza or go without his
cigar There is many a worse reason
for conduct than the memory of an old
fashioned conscience which taught US
in our childhood.
On the whole the spirit of life ir
college is healthful and morally invigor-
ating. Taking them in the large, / dc
not believe that there is a cleaner, more
honorable class of young people ir
America today than the students of oul
colleges. There are temptations in col
lege life, but they are not nearly sc
many as those which hover about young
men in offices and mercantile establish
ments, or shops and factories, or ever
in the meagre society of farming dis
trict. A young man is safer in col