THE PEOPLE AND THEIR UNIVERSITY
I do not want anyone who reads this book to get the idea that I am so
naive as to imagine that there is no enemy of freedom of teaching save
economic privilege. I know there are others, and all I am doing is
tackle the biggest one first. If I work for the control of universities
by organized farmers and labor unions, it is not because I am unaware
that these groups have their interests and prejudices, but merely
because I believe that these groups can learn to understand true freedom
and justice, whereas I know that a plutocratic class has never been able
to learn anything at any time in human history.
In the University of Wisconsin it is interestingly shown that as soon as
you break down the rule of special privilege, you find yourself
confronted by various kinds of mass prejudice and group interest. The
people of the state consider that they own a university, and they expect
this university to do their way. The question arises—who shall set the
standards, the voters, or the faculty, who think they know more? The
Wisconsin farmer drives up to Madison in his automobile, and demands an
interview with a dean, saying: “Here I am supporting this university by
my taxes, and here you’ve gone and flunked my son!” The farmers’
organizations keep jealous watch over the percentage of “flunkings,” and
if it is too high, they say the university is being made into a place of
academic snobbery. And maybe they are right—it is not so easy to say!
A former state superintendent of education in Wisconsin told me a funny
story. It was proposed to have the normal schools teach engineering, but
President Van Hise of the university said this was impossible; the
university alone could teach engineering, it had mysteriously and
mystically efficient methods of doing so. The superintendent met an
instructor who had recently been taken on in this school, and thinking
he would like to know about these special methods, he asked: “How did
they tell you to teach engineering?”
“They didn’t tell me anything,” said the instructor.
“You mean they gave you no special instructions about how you were to
teach?”
“Nothing at all,” said the other; then he thought—“Oh, yes, to be sure,
they told me to flunk one-third of the students and send them to the
Agricultural School!”
Also there are the religious organizations, clamoring for their share of
power. There is the so-called “Fundamentalist” movement in the Baptist
church, an organization which combines theological with economic
obscurantism, and wages vigorous war against the teaching of modern
ideas. Professor Otto is giving a course on “Man and Nature,” an
elementary survey of evolution, the most popular course in the
university. The Baptists denounce him as an atheist, and all the
religious organizations have got together to demand that the university
shall drop this course. The place is surrounded by a veritable
fortification of religious establishments, all carrying on instruction
of their own, and all trying to break into the state institution. There
is the Wesleyan Foundation, which hires “student pastors,” and is giving
courses off the campus, and wants these courses to count as university
credits. They have succeeded in arranging this at the University of
Illinois; why not at Wisconsin? There are the Catholics, with a million
dollar endowment, a chapel and dormitories, also clamoring for their
share of university power and prestige. There is a Lutheran building, an
Episcopal chapter-house, and so on. These religious movements are now
opened with an official university convocation, and they are pushing,
pushing all the time, trying to keep modern science away from the
people.
Also, of course, the militarists have been lifted up by the war wave.
Wisconsin is compelled to have military training, being a “land grant”
institution. So the campus is troubled by the clamor of young men
preparing themselves for slaughter. Officers strut about with artificial
pomposity—I say artificial, because I suspect they are ex-real estate
men and Rotary Club members. However, their disguise serves them with
the khaki-clad sheep who rush here and there in response to barked-out
orders, and have their photographs taken in long lines, to send home to
mamma and papa on the farm. I wandered about watching them; and for
variety I came upon a madman, standing all alone on the campus, leaping
up like a jumping-jack, shooting his two arms this way and that, and
making silence through a megaphone. I was puzzled, until I saw a
moving-picture operator taking the scene; it was a “cheer leader” having
himself perpetuated!
They have, of course, their athletic craze at Wisconsin, as everywhere
else. Enormous sums are handled, and there is the usual graft;
favoritism in jobs, free tickets and passes, and the “scalping” of
these. There is the usual professionalism, with easy jobs for athletes
pretending to go through college. There are the usual fraternities and
sororities, organized into little snobbish groups, and busy with student
politics, “log-rolling” and “back-scratching.” If the purpose of the
university is to prepare students for what they are to meet in outside
life, these things, of course, have their place.
They have a daily paper, the “Cardinal,” and I discovered that here also
the students are getting a complete training in the ways of the outside
world. The “Cardinal” is supposed to be the publication of the student
body, and those who edit it are supposed to do the work for the honor
and the experience. But large sums are taken in and no one knows where
they go. There was an investigation by the student senate, and the
findings were kept secret. One student on the board persisted in asking
questions, and he was expelled; he ran for re-election, and on the very
day of election the paper published an elaborate attack upon his
integrity; his answer was published the day after his defeat! The paper
refused publication of another student’s article, demanding to know the
circulation of the paper and the salaries paid to the editors, if any.
It developed that the business manager had borrowed three hundred and
seventy dollars from the paper without security, and that there had been
other such loans not specified. A pretty complete training for
capitalist journalism and politics!
Here, as everywhere, it is the fraternity and sorority groups which run
the student body. They bring from their wealthy homes the usual
reactionary opinions; and the last reactionary governor, Philipp by
name, laid down the ideal of a university a couple of years ago—the
mothers and fathers of Wisconsin might rest assured that their
university would send their sons and daughters home with the same ideas
they had when they came! I picked up a couple of issues of the
“Wisconsin Octopus,” a humorous monthly published by the student body.
Here is a little sketch, which might have been taken from the “Saturday
Evening Post,” showing a long-haired student in spectacles, listening
enraptured to a frantic Bolshevist orator on a soap-box, while another
figure, labeled “Stude Body,” turns away in disgust. This heads an
editorial, “Boost Wisconsin.” “Empty heads are the cause of mental
revolution,” says this wise editor—forgetting about stomachs. He
denounces “a small group, yet a very insistent and annoying group,”
which is attacking its alma mater. “Wisconsin welcomes criticism, but
criticism made in a holy and healthy manner. Wisconsin has no room for
knockers. They are not welcome.... Let those with radical thoughts keep
them to themselves.”
I turn to the front cover of this satisfied publication; it portrays a
table in a lobster palace, with a semi-nude girl-student at a
supper-party with a man-student. There is a quart bottle of liquor on
the table, and another in a bucket of ice beside the table, and the
man-student has fallen asleep, dead drunk. Such is student life
according to the “Wisconsin Octopus” for May, 1922. And in case this
issue be not representative, I take up that of January, 1922. This also
portrays on the cover a semi-nude girl-student at a “prom” with a young
man-student, who can scarcely be distinguished from the one in the
“Arrow” collar advertisement on the back cover. The frontispiece of the
issue consists of a drawing entitled: “The Clock Watcher,” and we
discover that a “clock watcher” is a man-student observing the ankles of
a girl-student. On the next page we find a poem, which speaks for
itself:
Absinth makes the heart grow fonder,
Make the lights go blinking yonder,
Makes one lamp-post seem like ten,
Absent absinth, come again.
On the next page we find a cartoon, portraying a semi-nude girl-student,
sunk in a lounging chair, smoking a cigarette; we are told:
A good woman’s a good woman,
But a smoke’s a smoke.
On the next page we find some sketches, seeming to indicate that the
“prom” is a kind of college kissing game, and that at the end of this
game the girl lies in a drunken swoon. Later on we find three drawings,
“The Famous Prom Soak,” which tell us in three funny ways that the
“prom” is a place where both boys and girls get drunk and have a
headache the next morning. A little farther on occurs an illustration of
a boy and girl who are conversing:
“I know something that beats the Prom.”
“What?”
“Buy a car, and park some place.”
A little later we learn: “If it’s stag, it’s a souse-party.” A little
later we see a girl walking on an electric-light wire, and it is
explained to us, “A modern girl can’t be shocked.”
I think I have quoted enough. I leave it to the impartial reader to
decide the question—whose heads are empty at the University of
Wisconsin? Is it the little group of devoted idealists of the Social
Science Club, who in the face of ridicule and scolding have brought a
series of writers and public men, both radical and conservative, to
discuss modern problems before the student body? Or is it the little set
of snobbish fraternity men, who run the social and political life of the
university, and edit its publications for the advertising of their own
sensuality and cynicism?