You may recall my story of how Mr. M. H. Hedges was kicked out of Beloit College for writing a novel about it. Mr. Hedges knows our higher education, and in an article in the “Nation” he gives a description of the American college student. I yield to the temptation to quote one paragraph:
The undergraduate of American colleges has been pictured as an enthusiast; the fact is, he’s a stone. An apostate to youth, the psychology books and the general impression notwithstanding, he is neither passionate, nor impetuously loyal, nor exuberant, nor impatient of trammels, nor idealistic. On the other hand, he is prim, correct, frigid in respect to things of the mind; and furtive, indiscreet, bold in reference to his instincts; and covetous and greedy in respect to grades, credits, managerships, class distinctions, and degrees—non-essentials. His favorite word is “pep,” and goaded by institutional convention he will stand for hours and shout himself hoarse for a team, but he will callously overlook the birth of the Russian republic, or the pathetic degradation and suffering of the Armenian people. He is intolerant of personal difference and diversity of character and yet clandestinely he will disturb a college assembly with an inopportune alarm clock, asserting a right to personal eccentricity. He is everywhere surrounded by records of the past’s greatness, and blindly moves in a present not realized. In the classroom he daily examines theories of government and constitutions, while his own social life upon the campus is a specimen of primitive tribal life with taboos, hecklings, mob-contagions, and naive sexual preferences. The fraternity is his tribe; the college his clan; and in parties and “functions,” he competes in amorous and pugnacious exploits.
Also I find in the “New Student”—a most useful little paper which you can order from 2929 Broadway, New York—an account of the activities of the National Student Forum, which brought six students from Europe to visit American universities, with the idea of widening the cultural opportunities of the youth of both parts of the world. The six students were divided into two groups, and an American student tells how he took one group, a German, an Englishman, and a Czecho-Slovak, to visit American colleges. The presidents of two large universities, Minnesota and Purdue, refused to allow their precious fledglings to be exposed to this foreign corruption at all.
At Fiske they made a two-day visit, and much to their surprise, were met at the station by the president, and taken in his car to a hotel. After a supervised breakfast, they were taken to the chapel, and the leader and one of the European students gave brief talks before the assembly. Then the student body was marched out with extraordinary rapidity, and the four visitors were kept in the president’s office. They were lunched by the president in the Chamber of Commerce rooms; in the afternoon they were taken for an automobile ride to inspect historic landscapes—and when they came back the leader made his escape, and was approached by one of the students, and asked if the visitors could not find a little time for the students. “The president says you are all booked up!”
In other words, President McKenzie of Fiske University was devoting his time to a conspiracy to keep his students from having private conversation with three young liberals from Europe! Brought face to face with the issue, the president declared angrily that the visitors had done the university “a moral wrong” by forcing this issue upon him. But then, when the party threatened to leave, it appeared that the president could not afford to have it known that he had refused to permit the visitors to talk to his students! After hours of “begging, threatening, and accusing,” meetings with the students took place—and nothing happened!
The University of Oklahoma received the visitors at the Y. M. C. A. “Our reception was cold and clammy.” There was a “get-together” conference with the student leaders; editors of student papers, athletic champions, Y. M. C. A. secretary, etc. “It took about two minutes to see that these fellows were quite convinced that we were Bolsheviks, and another two to realize that they had gathered together, determined to heed and understand nothing, but merely to be maliciously unintelligent and disagreeable.” That evening the three foreign students spoke in nearby churches; while the head of the party was summoned into a session before the student leaders. He tells the story:
For twenty minutes I sat and listened to the “leaders of the campus” tell me that although they had nothing against us personally, in fact they rather liked us, still on careful consideration of their responsibility for “the good of the whole,” they thought the university, and especially the freshmen and sophomores, too underdeveloped, and too susceptible to evil influences to hear what we had to say. And further, that they just wanted to mention that, as the whole student body was getting angrier and angrier at our presence on the campus, they thought it best that we leave as soon as possible, for fear that some student group would suddenly attain the overwhelming climax of its wrath and throw us out. Could anyone help laughing at that? I did laugh, and they commended me on taking the “disappointment” so well.
CHAPTER LXXXVIII
THE GOOSE-STEP REVIEW
“The Goose-step” would have been a failure if it had not excited bitter antagonism. Many collegians rushed to defend their alma mater; and the purpose of this final chapter is to review their reviews.
There must be at least ten thousand statements of fact in “The Goose-step”; which means ten thousand possible errors. I wish I could announce that I scored a hundred per cent exactness. I set out to do that in “The Brass Check,” but it couldn’t be done. I have to rely upon many other people for my information, and it is inevitable that slips should be made by some of these; also, it is necessary to type each manuscript several times—and after that comes the printer and his “devil,” and three sets of proofs to be read. I am told that some pious society in England offered a reward of a thousand pounds for an edition of the Bible without a typographical error; but the reward has not yet been claimed.