The Grenada sentinel. [volume] (Grenada, Miss.) 1868-1955, 1922-06-30

Episcopal Church, South, appeared il
Nthe New Orleans Christian Advocate
cot June Is, and, in the opinion OF
the editor, of this paper, it goes right
81 to the heart of much of the college
II and school life of the present day
1t contains so very much that should
awaken those who control and who
direct the work and life of the uni
Mversities and colleges of today, that
it is reproduced in The Sentinel:
The season for the commencement
exercises of the colleges has come,
3 and Boards of Trustees are meeting.
II 2ollege authorities-both trus-
tees and faculties-will do we'll to
& set about at this time the restoration
OF our institutions of learning to the
fulfillment of their true mission.
There is widespread discomfort with
some tendencies which have been pre-
valent for quite a long period.
More than twenty years ago, when
& Woodrow Wilson was President of
Princeton University, he said: II have
found everything a note of apology.
Learning is on the defense. We have
fallen of. late into a deep discomfort
with the college. The college has
lost its defniteness of aim. There is
utter confusion and hopeless dis
persion of energy"
Conditions in the colleges have
grown worse since President Wilson
made that utterance. Institutions of
higher learning, Northern institutions
( especially. have fallen too much un-
/ der the control of schoolboys, who
have turned them into places of re-
creation and carried them away from
. the fulfllment of their true mission.
Students and young alumni have been
allowed to determine college policies.
The unworthy ambition for large
enrollments has induced college au-
thorities to yield to boyish demands
for all sorts of easy courses, divers
ions and sideshows. The boys have
been accustomed to rule their parents.
Why should they not reign over the
institutions TO which they go? If
their rule over college authorities is
denied by any institution, will they
not go to other educational establish
ments where their demands will be
allowed and their mandates obeyed?
Their coaches" cost more than their
instructors; why then should instruc-
tion outrank games? Their clubs are
more costly than their courses; why
should study displace social engage
ments
By all the cross currents set in
motion by games, dances, diversions,
ETC., very many colleges have been
diverted from the true ends OF edu-
cation at which they should constant
ly aim, and. have been carried whith-
ersoeVer their youthful governors |
have listed.
The case was put clearly and CO.
genly by Dean Roe of the University
of Wisconsin in an article published
by Scribners Magazine some time ago.
Dean Roe said:
"Verily the American College, like
the American city, has been called
the melting pot of nations! Little
wonder that faculties have been
stricken with confusion before the
task of creating order out Of this
chaotic mass.
'Then, too, the college life of
these young people has been i'm
meensely distracting. Mr.. Slosson, in
his book, Great American Univer-
sities," after discussing the life at
fourteen of our representative insti-
this significant statement: The most
vulnerable point in our collegiate
system is the diversion of the inter-
ests of the student body, from the
true aims of the college. Social life,
tude of other students activities have
tion given to their studies.' We all
remember President Wilson's sum-
mary of the situation in the graphic
phrase: The sideshows are so num-
erous that they have swallowed up
the circus, and we in the main tent
do not know what is going on" For
the past twenty years faculties, stu
dent bodies and committees without
number have wrangled so intermin-
ably over intercollegiate athletics
that it is possible for Dean Keppel,
of Columbia, in book on undergrad
rate life published last year, to say
with truth of this evil that it is not
cooperating, but a splitting factor
between students and faculty, and it
has done more than anything else to
delay the coming of the new spirit
of working together and thinking to-
gether.' He quotes President Car
field, of Williams College, in recent
paper to the effect that in the New
colleges the average ex-
penditure per student for athletic
purposes was one hundred and seven
ty dollars, with only sixteen per cent
of the students participating in them.
The figures for the country at large s
were correspondingly fifty-nine dol |
lars and seventeen per cent partici-
pating'. Any number of college Of
ficials IN public and in private have {
attacked this major dis I
traction Of undergraduate life, and {
yet they have allowed it to flourish !
because they seemingly have lacked {