But civilized man cannot live without cooks.
The administration ordered the doors of the dining halls closed, locked, and guarded; service within the women’s dormitories was conducted as is customary in convents, and the debarred student waiters, boarders, and guests gathered without on the campus, dumfounded that a public institution should close its doors to the populace. It certainly looked like a “lockout,” and it was alleged that the plant was being operated by “scabs.”
All the stage machinery that accompanies a real strike and lockout was brought into requisition—circulars were issued appealing for the sympathy of the public, and implying that poor students had been discharged for no other reason than that they had belonged to the “Union,” and stating that girls working their way through college had been dismissed because they had expressed sympathy. Mass meetings were called, speakers were imported, inflammatory addresses were delivered, additional resolutions adopted, and appeals made to the Federation of Labor, to the State Industrial Commission, and to the Governor.
But in due time the members of the Student Workers’ Union found that their services were not indispensable, that State institutions do not invariably yield to the pressure of organized resistance, and as chastened individuals they applied for such positions as remained vacant, and went back to work.
The recital of these occurrences as a trivial circumstance has no place in a publication of this kind, but the significance, so far as it may throw light upon the general path of university development, and may help to determine the kind of mind and men that universities are producing or may produce, justifies serious contemplation.
It is generally admitted that universities are destined to become something different from what they now are. University men have a duty to perform, not only in watching the trend of this inevitable drift, and determining its probable course, but they are in a measure responsible for the course.
Not all institutions move with the same rapidity. Some possess a power that takes them away from their companions and into new territory. The records of their movements and the attendant results are generally looked upon as public property. It thus becomes possible for the conservative university, or the university that is not inclined, or does not have the means, to go into expensive experimentation, to learn much through the inexpensive process of observation.
What have we to learn from the conditions and occurrences above outlined?
Are we really getting all of the good things out of our institutions of higher culture that we think we are getting?