A Williams Anthology | Page 9

love of man as to give constant and ample expression to these motives, will be neither a reformer without grace nor a scholar without manliness. Give to such a man a flow of animal spirits and a dash of wit, and he should be not unapt to entertain even when poised on the dangerous wing of an after-dinner speech.
Review, 1870.
THE STUDENT COMMUNITY
HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE '67
A very interesting and significant feature of university life in the early days was the great part played by students in the scholastic community. They were not only included in the group described by the word "faculty," but they were charged with administrative and executive functions. The movement toward self-government, which has already borne fruit in many of our colleges, is in no sense a modern influence; it is a return to a condition widely prevalent in the early history of university organization. Not only did the students share, through various deliberative bodies, in the determination of the gravest questions of academic policy, but, in many cases, the executive head of the university was not only chosen by them but was often one of their number. The rector of the Italian universities was in most instances a student, often under twenty-five years of age. The rector of the University of Paris, who was charged with the gravest administrative functions, took precedence of the archbishop, and sat at times in the royal councils with princes and nobles, was originally elected by the student communities, and was often a very young man; and yet Paris was essentially a university of professors. Bologna, which was a university of students, was governed directly by the general assembly of undergraduates. Whether governed by students or by masters,--alumni as we should say,--these historic institutions were essentially democratic, and the student seems on the whole to have been the most important figure; not only because at the beginning he formed the constituency for the popular teacher, but because later when these throngs of students formally organized he had the largest share of privileges and for a long time the controlling voice in the management of affairs.
"Universities," said Professor Croisat at the centenary of the University of Montpellier in 1889, "do not come into the world with a clatter. What we know least about in all our history is the precise moment when it (Montpellier) began." It is impossible, in many instances, to fix the date of organization of many of the foremost of the older institutions; they were not made, they grew. There was a deep necessity for their existence in the intellectual and spiritual condition of the times, and they sprang into being here and there, in Italy, France, Spain, and England, in response to that need. They were notable, at the beginning, not for academic calm, but for turbulence and vitality; for they were not universities of science, they were universities of persons. The differences of scholastic rank were not very sharply defined. In early days, whenever the university body was formally addressed by Pope or Emperor, the students were named in the same sentence as the masters.
It is unnecessary to recall here the changes in condition which have separated the student class sharply from the teaching body and divorced it almost entirely from governmental functions. What is significant for the purpose of this article is an apparent disposition in many quarters to recede from the extreme position of entire exclusion of the student body and a tendency to move in the other direction. That tendency may become very marked and lead to a very radical change of policy in the government of colleges, a change so radical as to be revolutionary in its effect. It is certain that the government of colleges, like that of states, must from time to time undergo marked modifications if it is to remain vitally representative of, and harmonious with, the growing and changing life of the college. In healthy institutional life there is free play and interaction of all the forces that go to make up the organic life, and a certain flexibility is involved in all growth. The student community, is, after all, in most institutions the prime object of interest. A few foundations exist for the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, instruction being incidental; in most institutions, however, instruction is the foremost and absorbing function, and the student's welfare is, therefore, the controlling factor. In western colleges, where the edge of hunger for knowledge has not yet been dulled by opportunity, it is not an unknown thing for a committee of students to wait on a president or chancellor and announce the failure of some professor to prepare himself for recitations by fresh study of his subject. It would be well if students in eastern colleges would sometimes put on