TEE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY z^l 



presiding officer, through the latter's anxiety to save some notable 

 athlete or the scion of some family of wealth or high social standing, 

 himself to appear the delinquent, either in the artifice of detecting 

 cheats or in the art of teaching those that ivill not to learn if they can 

 possibly help it. Even stronger than any of these other motives may be 

 the desire of the individual officer, if he is the nominal head of the entire 

 show, to be popular with the " boys " and with their parents, the alumni 

 and other constituency of the institution. And so long as such a large 

 proportion of these "friends^' (?) look leniently upon, if they do not 

 largely indulge themselves in, the practise of these same vices, how can 

 any one lonely man stand against the multitude for firmness and due 

 severity in discipline? But a body of men like the faculties, or their 

 selected committees, in a great institution, is much more likely than 

 any one man can be, to administer even-handed justice, tempered with 

 reasonable mercy. While, then, I am by no means prepared to quote 

 with unlimited assent the following declaration taken from a pamphlet, 

 entitled " The Demoralization of College Life " : " College presidents 

 are not willing to enforce the law or even to allow it to be enforced when 

 it will cause them to lose students, especially rich and influential ones." 

 I am fairly confident in the belief that the total elimination of even the 

 appearance of one-man power or influence would greatly improve the 

 morale of the student body. And this morale, whatever is to be said 

 about it as compared with other countries and earlier days in this coun- 

 try, is certainly quite too low at the present time. It can be raised, and 

 that without any very severe difficulties ; and it would, in no very long 

 time, be raised, if the men in the university faculties who sincerely 

 want to see it raised, were given a free hand. Perhaps they might 

 not have the " nerve " at once so to check the extravagance of college 

 athletics as to make it no longer possible to spend a half-million dollars 

 on a single game of bootball; or difficult for the sons of impecunious 

 teachers or country parsons to embarrass their parents by calling for 

 a goodly slice out of their salaries, in order to attend in proper style a 

 dance that rivals in magnificence a state-ball at Government-House in 

 Calcutta. 



But is not the present prevailing form of university administration 

 the only one under which the trustees, corporation or otherwise named 

 governing board, can successfully discharge their part of the adminis- 

 trative functions? In these days, universities can not grow in other 

 respects unless they grow in their finances. And there is something 

 appalling, even to the multimillionaire, in the remorseless appetite of 

 the American university for an ever larger expenditure of money. The 

 trustees by advising and assisting the president, and by answering 

 generously to a certain obligation put upon, or gently hinted to them, 

 when they are chosen to the position of trustees, are supposed to be 

 under obligation to oversee the getting and the expenditure of the 



