The University of Michigan

by Wilfred Byron Shaw

STUDENT LIFE

Although the life of the student in the earliest days of the University had a bucolic simplicity almost unimaginable to the undergraduate of these days, it was not without its sterner side. The Rev. Theodoric R. Palmer of the class of '47, who entered the University in 1843, thus emphasizes the contrast between those times and the present:

But twenty-five years had elapsed since the first steamship crossed the Atlantic and the first ten miles of passenger railway in the United States had been laid but fifteen years. The telegraph was a recent invention ... electricity was a plaything, and electrical engineering unknown.

Nothing will point this contrast better, perhaps, than the mere fact that the Michigan Central, which had only reached Ann Arbor a year or so before, was running one train a day between Detroit and Dexter. Most of the students we may assume, therefore, rode into town on horseback, as he did, with their gear behind them, or perhaps took advantage of the several stage lines which centered in Ann Arbor.

They found a little town charmingly situated in forests and farm clearings, lying for the most part in the valley of the Huron, though gradually reaching out toward the University, from which a few houses could be seen along the western side of the country road which now is State Street. The Campus, which for years "looked like a small farm," was surrounded by a fence with a turn-stile on the northwest corner. This was often broken and was finally replaced by a series of steps, over which the students passed to their boarding houses in town after their morning recitations and their afternoons of study. In time this stile gave way to posts with room enough between for a man, "but not for a cow." Early hours were imperative, for kerosene or "coal-oil" was practically unknown in the forties, and candles and whale oil were the sole source of illumination, while the wood yard, always mentioned with deep feeling by every alumnus of that period, was the source of heat.

Time went according to a bell mounted on a post at the rear, which seemed to have been a prolific source of student humor. It was turned upside down in winter and filled with water, with a corresponding vacation the following morning; the clapper was stolen; and finally in Dr. Tappan's day it was even carried away, post and all. The President, however, was a match for the jokers and simply announced that as the bell was a convenience which the students did not seem to need, classes would be held henceforth without the usual call. As the regulations were very strict as to attendance and four unexcused absences a matter for the higher powers, it was not long before a student rose in Chapel and requested permission to reinstate the Campus time-piece,—which was graciously granted.

There are stories innumerable of donkeys and geese appearing in unusual places and of the Chapel on one occasion being filled with hay, while once a whole load of wood, wagon and all, was laboriously set up on the roof of the college hall. On another occasion a number of students, waiting for their recitation period, corralled a herd of cows grazing on the Campus, and so thoroughly frightened one calf that he rushed into the open door of the building as the safest refuge. Some one shut the door instantly, and when Professor Winchell's class-room door was opened, in rushed the badly demoralized animal. The effect may be imagined. Professor Winchell always thought it a "proposed and deliberate insult," but, as the historian of the incident in the "Class-Book" of '61 observes: "Any one will at once perceive that no one was to blame but the calf, who lost his presence of mind." All this humor, however, was rather elementary; for the most part life was sufficiently sedate, and the pranks ordinarily far from atrocious.

In the earliest days the term fees of $7.50 covered the cost of rooms in the dormitories, while the cost of board ranged from $1.50 to $2.00 a week. H.B. Nichols, a student in 1850, gave his father the following,—

account of monies, by me expended. In it I put an estimate of the term tax at $6.00. It is $6.62-1/2 and divided as follows, viz: Room rent, $1.50. Janitor's fees, $1.50. Wood bill $2.87-1/2 and Hall tax for damages to the Buildings, viz. Brokens doors and windows, $.75, making in all the sum of $6.62-1/2. Last term $4.60. So you see it is all a humbug for the catalogue to say the charges will range from $5.00 to $7.50 per year, as it will not be less than $15.00 to each student, or $30.00 to each room and if a student rooms alone his charges will be $21.00 per year!

As for his boarding place: