Vanderbilt University - Commodore Yearbook (Nashville, TN)

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i I 1 I , , the Vanderbilt faculty. And McTyeire did nothing to retard their hasty exodus from the campus. The President of the Board was seen by the protesting faculty as dictatorial, arbitrary, and indifferent to the interests and independence of the faculty. Criticism of undue authority held and exercised by a single man spread widely and became a challenge. The Board responded by defining the President's authority as defined by the Commodore. They encouraged criticism and suggestions, but demanded Complete loyalty to all Board decisions. The Board also urged that anyone finding this arrangement unacceptable should vacate his position. When the faculty members weren't being disciplined subtly, the students were being disciplined overtly. Vanderbilt-like most schools at this time took a paternalistic pose, with the rules of 1879 positively prohibiting students from smoking, carrying deadly weapons, or attending horse races, theatres, drinking saloons, billard saloons, or other places of dissipation. Such rules were attacked by a student article in the Vanderbilt Observer that called for gentlemanliness instead of the elaborate structure of restrictions. The University is not a school of reform for vicious boys, Garland responded. Any student found guilty of intoxication, or other gross immorality, will be at once dismissed. Mims, however, concluded that Garland was complying with the Board of Trust orders. 2

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immediately abolished, the evolutionist Winchell was dismissed. And this affair yielded a great deal of copy, both in professional journals and in the news media. Salary reductions provided another issue, dating from a change in the manner of paying salaries. Chancellor Garland and all other affected faculty members sent the Board a letter of protest in 1880. Mims explained, they called attention to the fact that they had been paid for the current year S2,213, instead of 82,500 . . . They cited a definite case to show the clearness of the contract which had been entered into by the President of the Board and every member of the faculty. When it had been necessary, some of these protesters had taken voluntary reductions at schools like Randolph-Macon and the University of Georgia, where such measures were necessary. But this was different. And they complained: If there is an instance of a reduction of salaries by a respectable university or college upon an increase of its ability to pay, we have no knowledge of the fact and we do not believe that any such exists. But if the signers of the protest were unsure of their status beforehand, they were quite certain afterwards. With the exception of Chancellor Garland,who was too strongly established ever to be interferred with, all of the signers of the protest came to regard themselves as marked men in 26

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Of nothing am I more fully persuaded than of the evil consequences of retaining in the code a law which you dare not enforce, Garland said while urging the Board to disciplinary reform in 1890. You cannot manage a body of young men but by dealing with them as gentlemen of truthfulness and honor, whether they be so or not. Better no rule at all, said Garland, than a rule that cannot be enforced and will not be supported. Following the Chancellor's recommendation land, for that matter, recommendations in the Observer and the Hustlerl, the Board made modifications that allowed Garland to announce that Hgentlemanly conduct would now be the only rule. Other situations had been improving, too. Mims noted that McTyeire set aside many of his suspicions and misunderstandings in dealing with the faculty. In fact, McTyeire once admitted that he got more from meeting with the faculty than meeting with the Board. Another aggravation was dispelled when, following a report by the Committee on Schedule and Course of Study, the Board abolished all future sub-collegiate classes and established admission requirements under 9