USA > Maine > Kennebec County > Waterville > The history of Colby College > Part 15
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In 1847 President Sheldon for some reason felt called upon to report to the Trustees on all disciplinary actions taken by the faculty during the year. In the fall term three sophomores showed up intoxicated at the Senior Exhibition, "for which offense they were reprimanded." In June a Masonic celebration had been held at Augusta, which seemed to seventeen students sufficient excuse to leave town without permission. Called up before the faculty, seven of the delinquents "declared they would not again leave town without permission," whereupon they were told that "no further consequences would follow." Seven others refused to make such a promise and were placed on probation. There seemed some doubt as to the penitence or the future intentions of the remaining three, but in the end they were "merely reprimanded." The President explained sadly that it had later become necessary to expel one of these three.
Ever since the crisis that had caused the resignation of President Chaplin in 1833, the Fourth of July had been almost an annual occasion for student out- break. Here was Sheldon's report for the Fourth in 1847:
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On the morning of the Fourth of July a large proportion of the stu- dents in the three lower classes absented themselves from the usual recitations. When the recitations were proceeding, a company of nearly twenty students marched backward and forward from North to South College, directly in front of the recitation rooms, ringing bells, blow- ing horns and other instruments in a way to disturb greatly the order of the College. The disturbers also followed to their rooms those stu- dents who had been present at recitation and repeated the noises in the entries before their doors. The disturbances were continued in full view of several members of the Faculty and partly in their presence. The Faculty felt called upon to put a stop to these vicious proceedings, and hence expelled two of the most prominent offenders. This measure had the anticipated effect of restoring order in the College. The other students who were known to be engaged in the affair were subsequently called before the Faculty and told that they could free themselves from any further consequences of their conduct by saying that they did wrong in absenting themselves from recitations, and by declaring that they would not again in similar circumstances absent themselves nor be en- gaged in similar disturbances.
In such manner did Waterville College observe the birthday of the Declara- tion of Independence in 1847. Several years would still elapse before the faculty would decide that appropriate observance called for a holiday from the usual classes.
Parents of students who had been suspended or expelled complained to the Trustees about the "undue severity" of the Sheldon administration. In 1848 the Board appointed a committee to investigate, and as a result Sheldon and the faculty were unanimously vindicated. In a long report of more than five hun- dred words, the committee said, "The decisions of the faculty, while they ex- hibit the firmness required in the exigencies, are no less distinguished by dis- cretion and clemency."
In 1849 the President received an increase of $167 per year for a term of three years because, in addition to his duties as President, he had given in- struction in French and German. The extra payment was deemed just because previously $125 a year had been paid to Samuel Francis Smith for part-time instruction in French.
The troublesome subject of commencement parts was raised again in 1850. The faculty, deciding that too many students had found means to dodge the ob- ligation of speaking from the commencement platform, appealed to the Trustees for a regulation. The Board thereupon voted, "The degree will be withheld from any student who refuses or neglects to prepare, rehearse or speak his com- mencement theme."
Until 1851 there had been no firm policy concerning what was called "back tuition." That term applied to tuition for any part of the four years during which a student was not in actual attendance. It was an especially touchy sub- ject in the case of a student admitted into advanced standing, because in the 1840's that was the status given not only to students admitted from another college, but students attending any college for the first time whose preparation was considered to render them capable of advanced work. The principle on which individual cases were usually decided was that a student must pay four years of tuition fees in order to receive his degree. If he had paid part of those fees at another college, he was expected to pay only the remaining proportional
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part at Waterville. But what of the man who was accepted into sophomore standing without previous college attendance? Should he pay a year's tuition for instruction he never received? What was the tuition meant to cover-actual instruction, or just the award of a degree?
In 1851 the Trustees decided to settle this matter once and for all. The wording of their vote is cumbersome because they meant it to cover several contingencies, but their general intent is clear.
Resolved, that all students who in the future may be admitted into advanced standing (not coming from another college) and who con- tinue here through the remainder of their college course, or who through circumstances beyond their control do not graduate, be required to pay but one-half of the back tuition, and that the residue be relin- quished to them; but in case any such student leave this for another college, the whole amount of his back tuition shall be exacted.
When, in the 1920's the College established a regulation that students be suspended from classes for non-payment of bills, both Trustees and faculty doubt- less thought the rule had no precedent at Colby. But indeed it had. In 1851 the collection of student bills had been so bad that the Board voted:
The Treasurer shall be required to report to the President of the Col- lege the names of all students who shall neglect to furnish a bond for college bills, as required by law, and also the names of all students who shall have three term bills due and unpaid. In case such bond is not furnished, or such term bill remains unpaid for one month after notice to the delinquent by the Faculty, they shall suspend such delinquent from all connection with the College until full compliance with the laws of the College and payment of such term bills are made.
For some time previous to Dr. Sheldon's administration the old custom of an examining committee, composed of Trustees and prominent citizens, had fallen into disuse. Decision regarding a student's promotion had come to be con- sidered the province solely of the faculty, and his graduation that of the Trus- tees on the faculty's recommendation. At the annual meeting in 1851, Samuel Francis Smith, recalling how those old examination committees functioned when he used to teach French in the College, as a sideline to his pastorate at the Baptist Church, tried to revive the custom. There were in the community, Smith contended, gentlemen who were especially skilled in the branches of study pur- sued by the students, and having them serve on an examining committee would assure competent instruction and at the same time heighten their interest in the College. Although the Board accepted Smith's proposal, nothing came of it. The day had gone by when examination of college students would be in other than academic hands.
The trustee meeting in 1852 was a long one, because, as we have seen, the theological differences between President Sheldon and other members of the faculty had then come to a head. The meeting stretched out into five sessions during three days. One point of controversy concerned the chapel exercises, which certain members of the faculty had refused to attend, because they would not listen to "heretical preaching." After long discussion the Board voted, "It shall be the duty of all members of the Faculty to attend the chapel exercises." Finally the Trustees decided there was only one solution to the problem: accept
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the resignations of President Sheldon and of Professors Keely and Loomis. Among students, parents and interested citizens there were so many supporters on each side that unqualified defense of either side seemed disastrous. For the College it was indeed a day of trouble, climaxing the long years of struggle for mere sur- vival. But it was also, in the sense of Toynbee's theory of history, a day of challenge and response. How the challenge was met is the story of the first of Colby's truly great presidents, James T. Champlin. But before we turn to that story, let us get a more intimate picture of Waterville College in the twenty years from 1830 to 1850.
CHAPTER XII
College Life In The Early Days
N O one now living knows just what it was like to be a student at Water- ville College before the Civil War. To get a picture of those days we must turn to the letters and memoirs that have been collected over the years.
One of the best of those recollections was written by the first Colby graduate of the prominent Merriam family. He was Rev. Franklin Merriam of the Class of 1837, whose son Rev. Edmund Merriam graduated in 1868, and whose grand- son Rev. George Merriam, 1879, was long the beloved pastor of the Bethany Baptist Church at Skowhegan. In the fourth generation were Arthur Merriam, 1911, Ethel Merriam Weeks, 1914, and Marion Merriam Hooper, 1925, while the fifth generation has been represented by Louise Weeks Wright, 1938, Mary Weeks Sawyer, 1944, Frank E. Weeks, 1947, Thornton Merriam, Jr., 1951, and Robert L. Hooper, 1952.
Franklin Merriam, who had determined to become a Baptist minister, re- ceived in 1833 the promise of fifty-four dollars a year from the Massachusetts Baptist Education Society to help him through college. Going by boat from Boston to Portland and thence to Waterville by stage-a journey of five days- Merriam arrived in the college town on September 1, 1833. President Chaplin had just resigned, as had Professor Conant and John O. Chaplin. The faculty consisted of four persons, Professors Keely and Newton, and Tutors Barnes and Farnham. The notorious workshop was then in its heyday, and of it Merriam wrote: "There was a good number of students attracted as I was, by the work- shop. Having a little knowledge of tools, I nearly met my college bills by morticing doors, window sashes and bedsteads."
Merriam was examined by Professor Newton for about half an hour and was then admitted to the college. He tells us how he lived during that first fall term. "In my room I found two chairs, a table, bedstead, wash stand, small looking glass, and stove. Mother gave me a straw bedtick, which I filled with straw. I boarded in the commons, managed by Deacon Emery, for $1.06 a week. He gave me a reduced rate because I drank neither tea nor coffee."
Like most of his classmates, Franklin Merriam sought a teaching position during the long winter vacation of his freshman year. Hearing of a possibility in North Whitefield, he decided to make application. In those days only a per- sonal interview was of any avail, and Merriam had no money to pay his stage fare to the Sheepscot Valley town. A classmate, who was holding three dol- lars for another fellow, let Merriam have that money on the dubious assumption that the latter could repay it before the other fellow staked his claim, and off young Franklin went. "I took the money," he wrote, "went to North Whitefield
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by way of Gardiner, and at King's Mills I found the school supervisor, who was pastor of the Baptist churches in Whitefield. He said to me, 'I suppose you know a good deal more than I do, so I will give you a certificate.' I obtained the school because he wanted a man to help him hold services on the Sabbath as well as teach. I boarded with one of the deacons who had not learned to read, and he treated me with great respect."
The modern Colby student who lives in Massachusetts is likely to main- tain an automobile and drive home half a dozen times during a term. Franklin Merriam didn't see how he could go home even after he had been in college a full year.
His father, who was anxious to see his son, borrowed enough money to pay the boy's boat fare from Hallowell to Boston. When Franklin received that money, he decided that it was worth the long walk to Hallowell in order to see the old home again. He tells us, "I took my bundle and started for Au- gusta, on foot and alone. When I was half way there, the stage loaded down with my college friends passed me. Near evening I called at a farmer's and ate a dish of bread and milk." The lad finally reached Hallowell and got passage on a sloop to Boston.
Hewett C. Fessenden attended Waterville College from 1834 to 1836, then transferred to Dartmouth. When he had become well established in Hanover, he wrote to a former classmate at Waterville a letter which throws light on col- leges in general during that fourth decade of the last century.
I joined one of the Societies (at Dartmouth) and they put an oration on to me the first thing. I tried to shirk off but couldn't. As I was a Waterville student, they expected something large, for Waterville stu- dents who come here are esteemed as good scholars and writers. I like the professors here very much. The students are pretty fair. As writers or speakers or mathematicians they won't hold a candle to the Waterville students, but as linguists they surpass them. The society libraries are very fine containing five thousand volumes apiece. They don't take much interest in debates, but have two or three orations to make up for them. The college library I have not been into, there- fore I will say nothing about it. We are studying mechanics with an instructor as good as Professor Keely, and we have commenced French grammar. I don't have to study my French at all, thanks to M. Schaf- fer, our little Frenchman, whom I shall long remember. Our other study is Paley's Evidences. You Erosophians had better get busy. I understand the Literary Fraternity are getting all the freshmen. I reckon your new Prex will make you walk straight, and without any such palaver as Babcock used to have. Success to him, I say. Now I will smoke my pipe a while, then go to bed.
Witness of public opinion toward Waterville College in those days is borne by an editorial in the Maine Farmer. After pointing out that the College was in the midst of a campaign to raise $50,000, the editor told why the campaign deserved success.1
Waterville is emphatically the poor man's college. Not only have its trustees and friends struggled through difficulties and prejudices, but have also, more than any other institution, established means for poor scholars to assist themselves by manual labor. It has a very exten- sive workshop, well supplied with tools, in which students may earn
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something towards defraying their expenses. The College also admits young men into a partial course of study-that is, a person may attend to one or two branches without going through a whole course of studies. To be sure, they do not receive a degree, but they get valuable instruc- tion which will abide by them throughout their lives.
This institution ought to have better support by the State. Brunswick College has been amply, liberally endowed by the State, but Water- ville has received very little. Yet Waterville College is the only college chartered by our legislature since we became a separate state. The situation seems like a parent's giving all his property to a stepson and nothing to his own child.
In 1840, when Benjamin Norris was a freshman at Waterville, he wrote a letter to his father at East Monmouth, Maine.
This is a new world for me. The ringing of the college bell for prayers, the stated hours for study, the manner of recitation, and the entire se- clusion from female society are all new to me. I have not spoken to a lady since I have been here. The bell rings in the morning before sunrise, at which time all the students leave their rooms and repair to the chapel, where the President or some professor attends to the read- ing of the Bible and prayers. From thence they proceed to the recita- tion rooms, where they recite for one hour. Then the bell rings for breakfast. We have the hours from nine till eleven, from two to four, and from seven to nine to study our lessons, in the reciting of which we spend three hours each day. The rest of the time we can devote to exercise and reading. Our lessons are short, but we have to get them well.
There are fifty-five students here, eighteen of whom belong to my class. We have to pay $1.12 a week for board, 121/2 cents for washing, eight dollars a term for tuition, and three dollars a term for room rent and use of the library.
A letter written by Timothy Paine2 in 1844 refers to the usual discipline that accompanied each Fourth of July.
They are doing strange things here. One of my classmates has been expelled for blowing a horn on the Fourth of July. Another student has also been dismissed. If they are not taken back, there will be trouble.
In almost every letter from the Waterville campus during the early period, the writer proudly referred to his college class. At Colby, in the 1950's, class organization had come to be almost meaningless except at the opening of fresh- man year and the close of senior year. After graduation it again became signifi- cant as the unit through which the Alumni Office kept in touch with Colby's sons and daughters. The change from the class cohesion of the 1840's had been brought about by the elective system of courses. When every member of a class took exactly the same subjects to the same professors during each of the suc- cessive twelve terms of the four year course, the word "class" meant, not as it does today, a meeting for recitation or lecture or discussion, but all the stu- dents who were freshmen or sophomores, juniors or seniors. Every examination was given to a whole class.
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That sense of class cohesion stimulated student unity well into the twentieth century when finally inter-class rivalry gave way to interfraternity competition. The hazing of freshmen accompanied by the resounding notes of Phi Chi, the fall baseball game with its accompanying grape rush, Bloody Monday Night, and the breaking up of Freshman Exposition by rioting sophomores are all happily incidents of the past. Yet something was lost when Colby men ceased to think of themselves as members of a particular class until after they were out of col- lege. Some observant alumnus frequently expresses the wish that every member of each class might have, every year in college, one educational experience in com- mon, just as they had it in Freshman English. He would not advocate a return to the narrow, completely compulsory program of the 1840's, but he contends it might be well for all students in a class to take together one subject each year.
This digression has taken us a bit afield from the intent of this chapter, which is to see what college life was like in the 1830's and 1840's. So let us see what the student had to eat in the college commons at $1.12 a week, al- though you will recall that one fellow paid only $1.06, because he did not drink tea or coffee. The $1.12 fare included for breakfast bread and butter, and coffee sweetened with molasses; for dinner beans twice a week, fish once, and meat four times; for supper bread and butter, and tea sweetened with a tiny pinch of sugar. On rare occasions there was added cheese or apple sauce or pie.
The records of the faculty provide a fertile source of information about happenings in Waterville College in those years from 1830 to 1850. On March 13, 1840, the Faculty took up the case of a libelous article in the Kennebec Journal referring to William S. Knapp, a senior student. The writer turned out to be Knapp's classmate, Josiah Harmon. The faculty voted that if Harmon would sign a confession admitting the falsehood of the statements in the article, he would not be subjected to legal prosecution for libel. Harmon still refused to sign. He was expelled and the entire whole proceedings were read to the students as- sembled in chapel. By that time Harmon had begun to see light, and on March 16 he reported that he was ready to sign the required statement. He was then promptly reinstated in college.
Frequently the faculty went to a lot of trouble in handling cases of mis- behavior. One spring day in 1841 not a single freshman or sophomore showed up for morning recitations. The faculty at once assumed that this was a con- certed movement, what they termed "a wicked combination." So it was voted that "the members of the freshman and sophomore classes are forbidden to attend any recitation until satisfaction is made for their non-appearance on the morning of April 10." Individual members of the faculty, in good investigative style, proceeded to round up and interview members of the offending classes one at a time. As a result, four students were exonerated from participation, although they were at the College, and three others proved to be out of town with permission. All the rest-every last man in the two classes-was called before the faculty and asked to sign a statement confessing that he had acted as part of "a combination," and to promise not to do it again. The exact wording was: "I acknowledge that I did wrong in entering into the understanding with my classmates to absent myself from recitation on April 10, and it is my intention to observe the college laws in relation to that exercise hereafter." Since at that time the college was without a President, it was Professor Keely who informed the offending students that they must sign the statement or be dismissed from college. Two students, M. and B., refused to sign and were summarily expelled. The next day B. was permitted to appear before the whole faculty a second time,
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saying he had misunderstood the import of the statement and he was now ready to sign it. He did so and was promptly back in good standing in the College.
In May of the same year Professor Keely reported that four students had disturbed the inhabitants of Waterville in an unseemly manner. Three were placed on probation for the entire summer term, and the fourth was "rusticated" with a rural minister, because the particular incident of the village disturbance had been preceded in this student's case by "too many occasions of profanity and general bad character."
In the fall of 1841, Sophomore F. was brought up before the faculty for "disturbing the recitation by burning asafetida" (a gum giving off an odor of garlic or onion). It came out that while F. had a hand in the prank, his class- mate E. had procured the odorous gum and had planned its use. It therefore seemed just to send E. home for the remainder of the term and simply put F. on probation.
That Commencement was a time of hilarious celebration is shown by a vote passed by the faculty on July 31, 1842: "Voted that Professor Anderson be ap- pointed to obtain such constabulary force as may be necessary to keep order on Commencement Day."
Modern plumbing being unknown in the 1840's, the faculty voted that Mr. Coffery be employed "to make all necessary cleaning of the Necessary."
The first instance of student interest in a gymnasium occurred in 1845. An application was presented to the faculty that students be allowed to fit up the now unused workshop as a place for "gymnastic exercises." The faculty voted to grant the petition provided the students would accept responsibility for any damage that might be done to the building.
College students are always losing textbooks, but what does one do when all the books in a subject taken by a whole class disappear? Evidently the Water- ville College faculty knew just what to do. Their record of July 24, 1845, tells us: "It was reported that the mathematics books of the sophomore class had been taken from their rooms without their knowledge. It was therefore voted that the sophomore class be informed that, if the copies of the second volume of Cambridge Mathematics, which have been taken from their rooms, are not returned, other copies will be ordered tomorrow forenoon to supply the class, the expense to be included in the charge of damages for the term."
Severe as was the discipline in some respects, the authorities took for granted some actions that a later generation would condemn. In 1846 they authorized the libraries to procure spitoons for the library. A certain consump- tion of alcoholic beverages was expected, and when three sophomores got in- toxicated in the spring of 1845, they were merely "called before the Faculty and reprimanded for excessive drinking."
As indicated in previous chapters, many students who had passed their twenty-first birthday belonged to the popular society of Freemasons. So we should not be surprised to learn that in 1846 the faculty voted that one Her- rick be allowed to go to Augusta, if in his opinion his absence from the masonic lodge, where he was an officer, would interfere with the proceedings.
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