CENTRALIZED AUTHORITY 271 



impulse of students toward pure sportsmanship that grows out of 

 facing a concrete situation with responsibility is worth a half dozen 

 lectures by a professional moral dictator. These are only instances of 

 the many possible lines along which student activity may express itself. 

 President Drinker, who has, with remarkable success, encouraged self- 

 government at Lehigh University, says : " It has been my experience 

 that the more responsibility is placed upon students, provided they are 

 willing to assume it, the better it is for all concerned." Even a small 

 duty that students enter upon heartfully is enough to transform their 

 attitude into one of partnership. It is an old rule that interests follow 

 activities as the shadow the body. Sympathies and enthusiasms apart 

 from deeds are pale and shallow. When students undertake anything 

 in concert they must have organization. This creates unity of action 

 and solidarity of sentiment. The fact of positions of emolument to be 

 filled and the need of officers, leads to college politics with its fine ten- 

 sion of rivalry and its tang of victory and defeat. Let us grant there 

 will arise occasional abuses and mistakes. There are instances on 

 record. The number is, however, relatively small. The redeeming 

 feature of it is that whatever failures and successes they make, there is 

 in it a preparation for citizenship. They are meeting in college life 

 exactly the problems and difficulties that they will have to face later. 

 We preach the gospel of learning to do by doing in the lower grades of 

 our common schools, but are full of the notion of the value of learning 

 to do by obeying, during the choice years of young manhood and woman- 

 hood, which are above all others the time for preparation for the duties 

 and responsibilities of citizenship. The educational world has had its 

 prophets this long time of the value of social and family ideals among 

 tiny children ; but by a strong irony of fate, we have been slow in taking 

 seriously the same problem during the critical formative years of a 

 college course. 



The root of the difficulty is in the need of more democracy in our 

 institutions. That would come in a day if all concerned could apply 

 the golden rule. There is a sort of mental near-sightedness in human 

 nature by which it is hard to see through the other person's eyes and 

 feel his problems. All are, furthermore, intensely human — biologically 

 human — and want all they can get of power and prestige. Universities 

 have differentiated into about four types of personages : a board of 

 education, a president, a faculty and a student body. All except the 

 last would dominate everything if it could. The best results will come 

 only when each participates slightly in the whole, but specializes upon 

 its own function. The board are specialists upon finance and should 

 exercise a fairly free hand in all the material interests of the university, 

 with only a negative control, through the power of veto, upon scholastic 

 affairs. The faculty are specialists upon institutional questions. All 



