THE NEXT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 281 



chosen to assume that they were dismissed for holding opinions at 

 variance with those of the administration, but those who have been 

 familiar with the situation have wondered less that these professors were 

 dismissed from their positions than that were ever appointed to them. 

 To president and faculty alike lack of frankness and freedom of expres- 

 sion brings needlessly harsh and often unmerited criticism. 



"What wonder if members of college faculties, on their part, sometimes 

 feel that they are employees, hired by the year, with a time-card, and 

 with a "boss" to enforce discipline; that they are clerks in a depart- 

 ment store with the floorwalker ever present to keep them at their tasks ; 

 that they are horses in stalls conveyed by railway train to some distant 

 point unknown to them; that they are tagged and pigeonholed in the 

 desk of the president; that they are parts of a machine, irresponsible 

 for the results of its work. Yet they never forget that it is also true 

 that at rare intervals great educational leaders have arisen who by 

 natural ability and educational training have seemed ideally qualified 

 for the headship of great educational institutions. And it has been 

 unfortunately true that these leaders have led where there have been 

 few to follow. Trustees, faculty, alumni and undergraduates accus- 

 tomed to the old order have feared to break with the past and have 

 turned back again when the path has narrowed and clouds have obscured 

 the heights. 



The inorganic nature of the college and the lack of relationship 

 among its different parts is well illustrated in the typical college 

 campus. This is crowded with buildings representing every period of 

 architecture known and not infrequently having buildings that utterly 

 refuse to be classified ; every variety of building material has been used 

 in their construction; when several buildings have been erected of the 

 same material, as of brick, the incongruities are needlessly multiplied 

 by the use of pressed brick, tapestry brick, cream brick, and every other 

 variety and color known to the builder; when one form of brick has 

 been somewhat consistently used, the trimmings of granite, of white 

 marble, or of red sandstone, or of brown sandstone, add the seemingly 

 inevitable note of discord. Even single buildings illustrate the same 

 spirit. One college received the gift of a physics laboratory and the 

 building was planned by the president and a local mechanic without 

 any consultation with the professor of physics. In another university 

 the president secured the funds for a new library building and this 

 he felt gave him the right to decide on the plans for it and also to 

 select its location on the campus ; incidentally, the site selected was next 

 to the athletic field. In another college, the planning of a large lecture 

 hall to be occupied jointly by several departments was turned over to 

 a young architect who had never planned an educational building of 

 any sort. Without consultation with any of the departments con- 

 cerned, the plans were drawn up, the building was erected, and the 



