USA > Maine > Kennebec County > Waterville > The history of Colby College > Part 48
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It is an advantage that our student population is drawn from a wide area. We must, however, give careful study to the changing trend that steadily reduces the proportion of our students from Maine. We must decide whether it is wise for us to continue to depart from what has until recently been the natural pattern of student distribution. We have always regarded Colby as a Maine college.
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At his first faculty meeting in September, 1929, President Johnson set up a Committee on Curriculum Aims, with a view to adjusting admission, courses, and graduation requirements consistent with what should be established as the aims of the college. He abolished several committees, whose functions could now be conducted by administrative officers. Most radical of all, he changed the weekly faculty meeting which had traditionally spent most of its time dealing with the academic and behavioral deficiencies of individual students, to a monthly meeting dealing largely with matters of academic policy. He insisted that every faculty meeting, convening at 7:30, close promptly at 9:00.
As a former high school principal and the recognized expert at Teachers College on the modern secondary school, President Johnson insisted that the time had come when New England colleges must recognize that the secondary school of 1930 was not that of 1900. At the annual meeting of the New Eng- land Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools in December, 1930, he de- livered a memorable address on "The Expanding Secondary School." Deter- mined that his own college should take the lead, he persuaded the Colby faculty to adopt new entrance requirements. Previously the entrance requirement had been fourteen and one-half Carnegie units, of which nine and one-half were re- quired in English, algebra, geometry, foreign language. Candidates for the B. S. degree were required also to present a unit of science and one of history. The remaining five units had to be selected from a stated list of school subjects, which did not include art, music, or any of the commercial subjects. The new requirements, effective with the class entering in 1934, demanded of all appli- cants ten required units in English, foreign language, algebra, geometry, science, and social science. Concerning the optional five units (the total had been in- creased to fifteen) the catalogue stated, "[they] may be in any subjects ac- credited for graduation from an approved secondary school." Johnson had won his battle for what he called "autonomy of the secondary school."
New graduation requirements were also adopted. The most significant change was the decision to grant only one undergraduate degree, bachelor of arts. That had been preceded by long controversy over the requirement of a year of mathe- matics for all students. At first the criticism had been met by a change in the content of the freshman course in mathematics for A.B. students, but after lengthy, heated discussions, the requirement was abandoned except for students majoring in one of the sciences or in certain other fields. Beginning with the Class of 1937, a student majoring in any subject offering a field of concentration could earn the A.B. degree at Colby by completing a course in English Composition, one in English Literature, two courses chosen from different subjects in science and mathematics, two courses in social science, two years of physical education, meet the foreign language requirements, fulfill the demands of his selected major, and complete a total of 124 semester hours.
The new requirement in foreign language was a progressive step, recognizing achievement rather than merely hours spent in the classroom. A student could meet the requirement by passing a reading knowledge examination in a foreign language, regardless of the way in which he obtained the knowledge. Several students each year were thus able to meet the requirement when they entered the College; most could pass it after completion of the second year of a language in college. At first the examination was offered only in French or German. Later the department examined applicants, on request, in Hebrew, Arabic, and Polish, as well as in Spanish and Italian. The faculty soon recognized the claim of the Department of Classics that the time-honored languages Greek and Latin were
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discriminated against, while the Modern Language Department saw the folly of extending the field to cover languages which no one at Colby was able to examine. The matter was resolved by having the reading knowledge examination include only those languages taught at Colby, ancient as well as modern. Because the Modern Language Department persistently held that the successful completion of a second year language course in college was the equivalent of a reading knowl- edge, they were unable to combat the increasingly vociferous student argument that it was unfair to demand the passing of the examination in addition to pass- ing the second year course. The faculty therefore finally voted that the require- ment could be met either by passing such a course or by passing the reading knowledge examination.
Of interest to the student of curricular changes in American colleges is the shifting of the target of attack from ancient languages to mathematics to modern languages. As early as 1925 it was clear that the requirement of four years of high school Latin followed by a year of that language in college was on the way out, even for those who sought the A.B. degree. When Colby permitted the student to earn that degree without any study of Latin, as did the new entrance and graduation requirements of 1934, it completed the victory over the classics which had begun more than thirty years earlier with the abolition of the require- ment in Greek. Yet so strong is the tradition of Greece and Rome in western civilization that never at any time in the subsequent twenty-five years was the study of classical languages completely abandoned at Colby. In 1959, more Colby students were studying Greek and Latin than had been the case in any other year since World War II.
Just as the B.S. students had been first to resent the Latin requirement, so the A.B. students attacked the mathematics requirement. Both attackers were abetted by the new educational psychology, which held that the long accepted transfer of ability takes place within very narrow range, and there is no such thing as "training the mind" by studying Latin or mathematics. Franklin John- son, like most of his colleagues at Teachers College, accepted the new psychology. Although the Colby faculty contained plenty of defenders of the old view, the newer concept won a bitterly fought contest. Along with Latin, the fixed re- quirement in mathematics had to go. By no means did the change kill mathe- matics at Colby. As the years went by, that subject became of increasing im- portance, and even before "Sputnik" drew renewed attention to mathematics, that department was graduating many majors who won distinction in school and col- lege classrooms, in government and industry.
With what the liberals called "the tyranny of Latin and mathematics" dis- posed of, where should the critics now turn? It can be commendably recorded that Colby never submitted to the Eliot philosophy of completely elective col- lege education. Never, to this date, has the College abandoned area require- ments, although in 1959 the only single course demanded of all students was Freshman English. Colby has always required some distribution in the fields of language and literature, science and mathematics, and the social sciences. But the question was bound to arise whether any foreign language should be de- manded for the college degree. The attack was led from the very stronghold that President Johnson had so vigorously defended, the autonomous secondary school. More and more of the high schools in Maine were, in the 1930's, diluting or altogether abandoning foreign language instruction. They insisted that the colleges ought to accept their graduates, with or without a foreign language. Sev- eral of the colleges gave in, but Colby, along with other colleges of liberal arts,
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refused to relax the requirement. When the revival of foreign language study was fostered by the Second World War, the correctness of that seemingly conservative stand was fully justified. Although the faculty has made several changes in the language requirement since 1934, it has never questioned the valid place of that discipline in a liberal arts education, to be upheld by some sort of definite re- quirement.
President Johnson introduced several measures to benefit the faculty. He persuaded the Trustees to make reappointments and promotions in April instead of June. He put up a long, hard fight for a regularized system of sabbatical leave. The Trustees, though sympathetic, felt that they could not grant his request, but they did permit him to arrange leave for faculty members desiring further study or to work on research projects, provided the arrangement could be made with- out expense to the College. Determined to do the best he could under such re- striction, Johnson maneuvered cleverly to provide a significant number of leaves. When possible, he would persuade a department, by omission of courses or other devices, to absorb the absence. When it was necessary to employ a substitute, the absentee was allowed the difference between that salary and his own. Not un- til shortly before the end of his administration did Johnson see success come in his long fight for sabbaticals, when the Board finally voted a regular system of half year leave on full pay or full year leave on half pay. The President was also interested in a tenure system and finally succeeded in having full professors placed on indefinite tenure. It was left for the succeeding administration, how- ever, to extend the privilege to associate professors. In 1959, assistant profes- sors, with tenure privilege in many colleges, were at Colby usually appointed for three year terms. Instructors, as was common at most colleges, were appointed annually. The retirement age was fixed at 65, except that members of the faculty who were full professors in 1935 could remain until the age of 70.
Another innovation of Johnson's time was the Academic Council. The in- stigator of this plan was Colby trustee Frederick Pottle, a member of the Yale faculty, who throughout his long tenure on the Colby board vigorously upheld the rights and privileges of the faculty. Pottle believed strongly in a kind of administrative senate of permanent faculty members, such as then prevailed at Yale. The result was the establishment of the Colby Academic Council, made up of all persons holding the rank of full professor at the College. To that council the by-laws of the Trustees entrusted wide powers over the internal government of the College. The Colby faculty has never become so large that it could not discuss and settle major matters in general session. Although the Council has authority to make major decisions, it has wisely and consistently referred impor- tant matters to the entire faculty. One function of the Council, which it cannot deputize to others, is to advise the President on faculty promotions.
Johnson's insistence that health be listed as the first aim of the College was no idle gesture. He sensed at once a deplorable situation in respect to care of the sick in the men's division. The Executive Committee during 1927-29 had been aware of the need but had been unable to effect a remedy. Johnson at once persuaded the Trustees to turn the recently acquired Bangs House property into an infirmary for men. Thanks to Mrs. Eleanora Woodman, a women's infirmary with resident nurse had already been set up in Foss Hall, but the men students had no adequate medical attention. Unless a man was sick enough to be sent to the Sisters Hospital, or to the new hospital recently opened in the former residence of Dr. Frederick Thayer, he got along as best he could, under care of his fellow students, in dormitory or fraternity house. Such a barbarous situation could no
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longer be countenanced. Bangs House was therefore equipped as an infirmary, with Mrs. Jennie Clement as resident nurse and Dr. John O. Piper as college physician. The very first case in that infirmary was poliomyelitis. Prompt diag- nosis and professional care brought the patient through without serious impair- ment, and the reputation of the Colby infirmary was established.
To his amazement and chagrin, President Johnson soon learned that student housing had improved very little at Colby since his own student days forty years earlier. To be sure, central heating and sanitary plumbing had been introduced into dormitories and fraternity houses, but those residences had no regular super- vision. By the fall of 1933, the depression had seriously affected fraternity quar- ters owned by the College. Many a student found he could live more cheaply by renting a private room in the city. For twenty-five years the College had been collecting a fixed per-student rental in those fraternity quarters, regardless of the number of students housed in each fraternity. With income thus seriously af- fected by the failure of the chapters to fill their houses, the Trustees ordered an investigation. As a result, a plan was agreed upon whereby a fixed total rental was demanded, to be divided among the occupants.
Determined that the slovenly, often unruly conditions prevailing in the dor- mitories, Hedman and Roberts halls, must be stopped, Johnson was glad to accept and strenuously support the suggestion of the Dean of Men that faculty residents be placed in those buildings. Although told by administrators in other colleges that the policy would never work, that no faculty person could last a month in such a policing situation, Johnson boldly instituted the plan. That it worked ad- mirably was due in large measure to careful choice of the faculty residents. In the fall of 1930 Alfred K. Chapman took up residence in Roberts Hall and Walter N. Breckenridge in Hedman Hall. Both remained as efficient and respected heads of those dormitories for many years. They were guiding friends of the boys, not police officers. They respected confidences, and they enforced order by the strength of personality rather than by arbitrary rules. The dormitories became orderly places for residence and study; property damage was reduced to a mini- mum; and not infrequently some student tried to move out of a fraternity house into Hedman or Roberts Hall in order "to get a chance to study."
For many years previous to the Johnson administration, the College book- store had been a private business conducted by students, who sold the stock and good will to a successive group, usually two student partners. Johnson felt that such a practice was wrong. He induced the Trustees to pay off the current owners and take over the store as a college-operated business. Because the office of financial officer and superintendent of maintenance had proved far too heavy a load for one man, the Trustees had heeded Treasurer Hubbard's request for assistance. Welton Farrow was appointed to the joint position of Superintendent of Grounds and Buildings and Manager of the College Store.
It was during the Johnson administration that Colby began an exchange of students with foreign universities. The first Colby student to study abroad under the plan was Philip Bither, 1930, who after a year in Germany became a per- manent member of the Modern Language Department at Colby. The first foreign student to attend Colby under the exchange plan was Harro Wurtz of Berlin. During the 1930's several students from France, Germany, and Czechoslovakia studied at Colby, while Colby students attended universities in European countries. When economic conditions made it impossible for European countries to finance their part of exchange agreements, Colby continued to supply tuition and living expenses to one boy and one girl annually from foreign lands. Fulbright Scholar-
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ships, after World War II, made possible the attendance of many Colby graduates at foreign universities.
Foreign students were not the only persons to benefit by free tuition during the 1930's. In 1933, realizing that a number of recent graduates were unable to secure employment because of the worsening depression, President Johnson proposed that any such graduates be allowed to attend Colby classes without cost. In June the President told the Trustees: "Twenty-eight of our recent graduates availed themselves of this opportunity during the second semester. We have re- ceived much favorable publicity for this effort throughout the country." The policy was continued until 1936, when employment conditions had substantially improved.
Franklin Johnson believed that a college should be as much concerned with exits as with entrances. He therefore encouraged Registrar Elmer C. Warren to set up Colby's first formal placement service. Warren proceeded to bring to the College every year the personnel representatives of prominent companies, with the result that hundreds of Colby graduates were advantageously placed. He also developed a program of instruction for seniors, to acquaint them with employment possibilities and how to make effective application. It was Elmer Warren who laid the groundwork for the later employment of a full-time placement director in the person of Earle McKeen.
President Johnson believed that students, as well as faculty and alumni, should have a voice in college policy. Although his presidency was not to see a com- mon student council, comparable to the common alumni office, he did much to encourage and strengthen the separate student councils for men and women. When Johnson became president, the Women's Student League had already de- veloped into a strong, responsible body under the direction of Dean Ninetta Run- nals. The Men's Council, however, was plagued by fraternity domination. John- son asked the Dean of Men to try to work out with students a plan for more effective student government in that division. In November, 1938, the Dean reported to the President:
Five years ago I began a quiet compaign to convince our men stu- dents that we needed radical revision of student government. We had a student council elected by fraternities and not representative of the student body as a whole. It neither functioned well on general stu- dent activities nor wisely met the fraternity problems. Last spring, at my suggestion, our students voted to organize two bodies: (1) a stu- dent council elected by proportional ballot and representing all the men students; (2) an interfraternity council whose make-up is unique in na- tional fraternity circles and of which we are especially proud.
The Interfraternity Council consists of the heads of our eight fraternities, their faculty advisers, and the Dean of Men. The advisers and the Dean have no vote, but may make motions and participate in discussion. Only the undergraduates make decisions. The first instance of student- faculty cooperation on our campus is this council. It has strengthened every one of our fraternities. The new Student Council has no faculty representation, but the President meets weekly with the Dean, and the entire council seems eager to cooperate with the administration. Di- vorced from fraternity allegiance, the Student Council now has a chance to meet all-college problems from an all-college viewpoint.
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Just as Arthur Roberts had presided at the hundredth anniversary of the College, so Franklin Johnson was privileged to preside at the centennial of the death of Colby's most famous graduate, Elijah Parish Lovejoy. A committee headed by Trustee Bainbridge Colby, former Secretary of State, arranged for sig- nificant observance on November 8, 1937. The speaker was the Honorable Her- bert Hoover, former President of the United States, whose address at the historic old Baptist Church, where Lovejoy had received his diploma in 1826, was broad- cast over the nation. Forty members of the Lovejoy family were present, and three of them were given honorary degrees.
One of Franklin Johnson's outstanding achievements was his creation at Colby of a Department of Health and Physical Education, making all persons in the department, including the athletic coaches, responsible to the President through the department head. President Roberts brought C. Harry Edwards to head a department of physical education in 1921. He had made many improvements, especially in classes for all students and in remedial work, but was severely handi- capped because of his lack of control over athletics. Several coaches were em- ployed in whole or in part by the Athletic Association and were not responsible to the department head. Because athletics were financed almost wholly by the association and none of its funds passed through the hands of the college treas- urer, the separate autonomy of the association seemed logical.
The confusing situation had grown out of the traditional, but now outmoded concept, that athletics are not a part of college education and are to be handled informally by the students themselves. As the years went by, sports proliferated in number and importance, and in many a college the athletic tail threatened to wag the academic dog.
Johnson took no immediate drastic action, but patiently mustered support for reform. The Alumni Council, under direction of Secretary Cecil Goddard, took up the cause and presented a plan of reorganization. Enthusiastically ap- proved by President Johnson, the plan was adopted by the Trustees in April, 1934, to become effective with the opening of the ensuing college year.
The plan endorsed the Johnson principle of combining physical education with the College's responsibility for student health. There was created a De- partment of Health and Physical Education, the head of which would not only have charge of physical education classes and direct the athletic program, but would also supervise the men's infirmary and all the health services.
One reason why Johnson was so strong an administrator was that he never failed to recognize where authority lay, and he never hesitated to cut corners in an emergency. To straighten out the athletic situation in 1929, he acted on his own authority and simply reported to the Board a fait accompli. But when more thorough reorganization offered time for consideration and debate, he asked the Alumni Association to make recommendations, and then asked the Board to adopt those recommendations. Throughout his administration he showed an almost uncanny ability to sense when an issue demanded his immediate, decisive action, and when it could better be referred to faculty or Trustees. He made it plain that the Trustees were not expected to operate the College day by day. In 1938 he said to the Board:
While it is not the function of the Trustees to direct the internal affairs of the College, they should be reminded that there is no other rea- son for their existence as a board than that students may receive the best education. You have a right to know and should be interested
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in learning how the President and the Faculty whom you appoint are performing the functions which are peculiarly theirs.
So much of President Johnson's financial concern was focused upon May- flower Hill that even Colby alumni are surprised to learn how the College en- dowment increased between 1929 and 1942. In April, 1937, Johnson was able to report to the Trustees: "The income from invested funds has increased from $74,151 in 1930 to $118,250 in 1937. This has been an increase of $44,000 during the period of the depression." In 1929 the endowment stood at $1,461,960; in 1935 it had reached $2,285,387, and in 1942 stood at $2,989,980. Among the gifts which had nothing to do with the new plant on Mayflower Hill was the bequest of the son of former President James T. Champlin. Entirely in the common stock of Gold Dust Corporation, this legacy, originally estimated at half a million dollars, was reduced to about $150,000 before the College could dispose of the stock. But it was a splendid gift, coming from a man whom the College scarcely knew existed, but who had not forgotten his boyhood days when his father had been head of the College. From the estate of Charles Potter Kling the College, joint residuary legatee with Bowdoin, received nearly $650,000, and from the estate of James King, 1889, came $140,000. Substantial funds, includ- ing endowment of the Department of Business Administration, came from the estate of Herbert E. Wadsworth, 1892, who had been Chairman of the Trustees from 1926 to 1934. From the estate of Miss Ophelia Ball came $62,000; from Colby Blaisdell $15,000; from Hannibal Hamlin, grandson of Lincoln's vice- president, $20,000. From Mrs. George Murray and Dr. Percy Merrill came life annuities respectively of $35,000 and $25,000. The gracious lady, Mrs. Eleanora Woodman, who in her life-time had been a generous benefactor, bequeathed more than $200,000 after her death, setting up the very substantial Woodman Fund for assistance to needy students. It is interesting to know that the largest gifts made toward endowment during the thirteen years of Franklin Johnson's presidency were made by Frank Champlin, Charles Kling, and Eleanora Woodman, none of whom was a Colby graduate.
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