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

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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.

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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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13 that these institutions have failed to produce men and women able to prevent the current phase of economic slump and social irresponsibility through which we are for the time passing. That we are in a phase of widespread disintegration of ancient standards and sanctions respecting govern' ment, economics, and ethics is beyond dispute. The advance of knowledge has led to the surrender of many old standards, before our advance in social insight and inventiveness has resulted in new standards. But iiv telligence will increasingly protest the tendency to load the main blame for this upon schools, colleges, and uni' versities. Wherever youth comes together and mature scholars press their faces against the windows of the fu-ture the eternal battle between conformity and change will be waged. Some will tit with easy acquiescence into the prevailing order of their time, but many will be driven by the creative heresy of an insatiable curiosity and moved by a discontent divine or devilish—to search for the outlines of a new order. The schools have stepped bravely into the breach caused by the loosening controls of the home and the church over the spirit and standards of mankind. The schools are, I make bold to say. the strongest bulwarks we have today against loose thinking, loose living, cyni' cisrn, and social irresponsibility. No institution of our social order accepts more gladly the impact of honest public criticism or prosecutes more freely the enterprise of self'criticism than do our schools, colleges, and uni' versities. The problem confronting us in the decade ahead is to keep our schools free from cheap political control, sup' port them with the fullest adequacy our restricted re-sources will permit, make the rewards and opportunities of the teaching profession such that we shall stop draining our best genius off intoother callings, and give the schools a real chance to play a creative role in the salvaging and stabilizing of our civilization. . . . the burden of educational tradition.