CHAPTER XLIX
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.