University of Wisconsin Madison - Badger Yearbook (Madison, WI)

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11 UNIVERSITY AND THE SOCIAL TURMOIL By GLENN FRANK, PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY A PROFOUND change has come over the student mind of American universities during the last quarter century. The picture of the American college lad of a quarter century ago is today obsolete. But popu-lar notions die hard, despite the fact that most popular notions are out of date by the time they become popular. The hayseed” of the musical comedy of the Mauve Decade is still doing duty behind the footlights despite the fact that he bears little if any recognizable relation to the modern farmer. In like manner, the rah! rah! cob lege lad concerned only with saxophones and synthetic gin is still the popular notion of the modern American undergraduate, despite the fact that, save for the moronic minority of students, this picture has become long since a libel. After more than seven years of contact with the Wisconsin student body, I venture to challenge this musical comedy version of the American undergraduate. Something has happened to students during the last quarter century. About a quarter century ago Woodrow Wilson was experimenting at Princeton with the heretical notion that a university should be an educational institU' tion. He was seeking to institute policies and procedures that would focus the minds of students on the main busi-ness of universities. In the midst of his fight, he suggested that, in the modern American university, the side-shows were drawing the crowd away from the main tent, that students were spending more interest and energy on athletics, social adventures, and extra-curricular pro- Collegiatistn 1905-1930 A. D.

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10 POLITICS AND POLICY BESET on the one hand by the most precarious fi-nancial situation in the University's history, and on the other with proposals for its abolition as an execu-tive body, the Board of Regents spent a year of the most feverish activity. The shadow cast by the death, early in March, of Miss Elizabeth Waters, vice-president of the Board, was a profound one. President Frank said simply and beautifully: “If the secular forces of mankind could confer sainthood, she would even now be canonized in the hearts of the thousands whose lives she warmed and illumined. . . . Even in a world bereft of faith she would still have immortality in the lives she has touched and when they had died, she would still live in the legends of her loveliness they would leave to their children. The general tone of its deliberations and decisions has been decidedly conservative. Even the university faculty seemed revolutionary by comparison, notably in the Regent-Faculty disagreement over abolition of the compulsory gymnasium requirement, and the university's athletic policy. Veteran battler for liberalism. Regent Meta Berger, faced a Board that feared any decided change, and in many instances she stood alone. The budget situation was, of course, the main concern. But the Regents' hands were tied by the persistent prospect of a State Legislature which would go ahead with its budget-cutting irregardless of the Board's pleas or programs. Consequently, the policy of the Regents was to conserve wherever possible, without making any decided and general attempt to re-organize the university on more economical lines. The Board adopted the plan of not filling vacancies in the faculty, wherever such a procedure was possible; it turned back to the state $120,000 in capital and maintenance funds in order to meet the emergency; and it transferred funds from department to department in a frantic effort to make all of the cash go around. Although recognizing the fact that over $90,000 worth of their budget troubles was due to a drop in out-of-state students, the Board remained apparently oblivious to arguments that it would be a policy of enlightened self-interest to lower non-resident tuition fees. One of the few pitched battles between the Faculty and the Regents resulted pacifically in a victory for the former after months of deliberation. The controversy arose as a result of a report submitted by Prof. V. A. C. Henmon, psychologist, and other experts on the compulsory gym question. The Committee report, concluding that compulsory gym for the first two years was both Backus, Ullspcrgcr. Grady, Gumkrsen, Berger, Runge. Frank, Clausen, Phillips, McCalFrcy, Eimon, Wilkie, Sholts, Christophcrson. physically undesirable and financially wasteful, was passed by the Faculty and referred to the Board of Regents. Without stating its direct disapproval, the Board sent the suggestion back to the Faculty for certain alterations. These were made, and despite a chorus of disapproval and tearful groaning on the part of the Reserved Officers' Training Corps officials and the athletic officials, the proposal for a reduction of the compulsion to one year was submitted to the faculties of the various colleges for approval. The Faculty of the College of Letters and Science followed the Regents' suggestion when it agreed to give regular university credit to the basic corps of the R. O. T. C. for the first two years of military training. The faculty also agreed to cut down on the credits given to the cadets in the advanced corp. Soon after the gubernatorial election had resulted in a change of party, rumors were current to the effect that abolition of the Board of Regents was being considered. This move, it was whispered, was to be a part of the Democratic program to centralize the educational organization of the State in a special Commission to control all of the schools, colleges, and the State University. The Board of Regents, whatever may have been its inadequacies as a strong executive organ, will probably continue to operate in the glorious tradition of service and intelligence which for over fifty years has been its heritage. The danger is that it will become an organ of party interest and selfish particularism -that it will be used by politicians or fanatics for their own ends. As long, however, as the Board of Regents remains true to its noble past, it will neither be weak as an executive body (as it was this year with its hands tied financially) nor in danger of abolition or incapacitation.

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12 jects than upon things of the mind and spirit. His indict-ment is by no means invalid today, but the actors in this drama of misplaced interest and squandered energy have to some extent changed places in the last quarter century. A careful survey of the daily newspapers published by the student bodies of American universities, aside from occasional exhibitions of indiscretion and bad taste that are the transient expression of immaturity, will reveal a more intelligently critical attitude towards both the side-shows” and the main tent than can be found in the expressions of the adult followers of the carnival side of college life. I find a singularly sincere and sustained passion for reality among the majority of modern undergraduates. Man for man, I think there is a lower percentage of ukelclc addicts among college students than among the general population of the country. In fact, the trouble with some modern universities is that their administrators are sometimes thinking in terms of educational traditions while their students are thinking in terms of educational realities. The universities of the United States are today wrestling with two difficult enterprises: (i) a searching revaluation of their aims, and (2) a sweeping retrenchment in their budgets. Both of these difficult tasks have impor- tant implications respecting the place of universities in the American future. American universities are being driven to a revaluation of their directive aims by an increasing realization that we are no longer The America of the Pioneer but an America Come of Age. And we suspect that the drastically different America into which we have grown necessitates some fundamental revisions of the purpose and procedures of our education. As we pass through a phase of economic stringency, we properly begin to subject all of our institutions to fresh analysis and audit. In piping times of plenty we pour out our money in support of our public institutions without too great bother to subject their services to continuous critical assessment. But when the pinch comes, we begin to say we must spend our money more carefully in the places where returns are justifying the investment. All this is good if we keep our judgments honest. There is, however, a powerful temptation to trump up false charges against our public institutions and to use these charges as a smoke-screen behind which to hide our slackening loyalty to these basic agencies of our social order. Evidence accumulates that the next decade may witness a slackening of public support of the schools, colleges, and universities of the United States on the plea . . . false charges against our public institutions.