USA > Maine > Kennebec County > Waterville > The history of Colby College > Part 53
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83
The Government soon began to emphasize the importance of mathematics and the physical sciences, and those fields were immediately strengthened at Colby. A course in mathematics below the usual college level was taught, to stimulate interest in the subject among students whose secondary school preparation in that area had been faulty. Courses were introduced also in Descriptive Astronomy, Geography, History of the Far East, Consumer Economics, and Advanced Ac- counting. In December, 1942, the faculty voted to allow credit toward gradua- tion for courses in typewriting and shorthand, subjects hitherto taught at Colby without academic credit.
Alert to the possibility that enlistment and draft would drain the college of its male enrollment, the authorities began at once to urge the choice of Colby as one of the colleges in which the armed services might operate one or another of its training programs. These persistent efforts resulted in the selection of Colby as one of a limited group of colleges for the installation of a unit of the College Training Program of the Army Air Force.
Colby was indeed ready for such a program. As early as 1939 courses had been introduced in cooperation with the Civil Aeronautics Authority and the operators of the Waterville Airport. Under the direction of Professor Win-
408
HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE
throp Stanley of the Department of Physics, basic courses were given at the Col- lege to men enrolling especially in the program, and flight instruction was given at the airport. By 1941 the program had so developed that the Navy sent a small detachment of junior officers to receive the same training.
The Air Force program, started at Colby early in 1943, intended that one hundred enlisted men should arrive each month from a basic training center until the total number in the detachment should reach 500; that each group should remain five months, receiving four months of academic training in English, mathe- matics, physics, geography, and U. S. history, along with basic military instruc- tion, and a final month of flight training. Each successful student would, on completion of the course, receive a certificate of recommendation to Pre-Flight School of the Army Air Force.
The program turned out to be on paper only. In practice its realization was never achieved. Only one of more than twenty groups that started the pro- gram received the full five months of training. The other groups were deactivated within one to three months, according to the service needs for men. One of the most discouraging, yet apparently necessary decisions, was the sudden transfer of these student trainees out of the air arm altogether and the hasty placing of them in infantry regiments.
The irregularity of the program justified the decision of the college authorities when the original contract was signed with the Government in January, 1943. That decision was that the enlisted men sent to the campus for training under the program would not be enrolled as students of Colby College, because the college had no voice in their admission and no opportunity even to suggest aca- demic standards of selection. The Twenty-first College Training Detachment of the Army Air Force, activated at Colby College on February 27, 1943, was therefore, for all purposes, a separate institution utilizing the college facilities.
The college officer in general charge of the contract was the Treasurer, A. Galen Eustis. Ernest C. Marriner was relieved of part of his duties as Dean of Men and was made Academic Dean of the Detachment. It became the Dean's duty to select a faculty, only a few of whom could be obtained by transfer from the regular staff. For instance, the College had only two teachers in physics. The Army program demanded a physics staff of eighteen. Somehow they were obtained, although a number of them had little training in the subject. Among the recruited physics teachers, however, was one with an American doctorate and another with his doctor's degree from one of the oldest European universities. Since the Army demanded weekly report of marks, the mere assembling and re- cording of records became a formidable task in the office of the Academic Dean. To relieve Marriner of some of his conventional duties, Professor Walter Brecken- ridge was appointed Assistant Dean of Men.
In order to house the CTD soldiers, it was necessary that Foss Hall be completely vacated, and fortunately the new dormitories for women and the Women's Union had been so nearly completed that women moved into them in September, 1942, and by the mid-year point in February, they could be fully occupied. But Foss Hall was quite insufficient to house all the uniformed men. They spread out into Roberts Hall, Taylor House, and other buildings of the down-town property.
Readers may recall that the winter of 1942-43 saw double daylight saving time. Not only was the summer plan of one hour earlier by the clock continued into the winter, but an additional hour was observed. Therefore, when the CTD began classes at 8 A.M., it was actually only 6 A.M. by standard time.
409
A NEW PRESIDENT AND A NEW WAR
When those soldier boys first camped in the dead of winter at Colby, they com- pleted one class and part of another every morning, from Monday to Friday, before streaks of daylight appeared in the east over the roofs of the Hollings- worth mill.
Although the assigned troops were not enrolled students in the College, President Bixler was determined that they should be treated as members of "the Colby family." Entertainment was generously provided; many were invited into Waterville homes; and the old DKE House on College Avenue was turned into USO headquarters under the able direction of Professor Herbert "Pop" Newman. In the spring of 1944 the detachment's baseball team won wide acclaim with its undefeated schedule and its pitcher, who seemed headed for the big leagues. When the war was over many of the more than 2000 men who were attached to this Colby program recalled their experience on the campus as the happiest of their entire wartime days.
Relations between the academic officers and teachers and the military per- sonnel were most cordial, as were the relations of both with the flight instructors at the Waterville Airport, which was soon renamed for Captain Robert Lafleur, a Colby graduate killed on an air mission over the Mediterranean. The Com- manding Officer of the detachment was happily chosen. A banker in civilian life, Captain E. T. Patterson understood the nature of a liberal arts college. Though a good disciplinarian, he was not a military martinet, and he was as- sisted by a group of subordinate officers who were also college men, while the non-commissioned officers of his staff were men of experience in regulations and routine.
In February, 1944, when the CTD had been at Colby only a year, the Government decided to discontinue the program in all the colleges where it had been inaugurated. By June, 1944, about a year before the German surrender, the last of the uniformed men left the Colby campus. The program had been too short for complete appraisal, but a few accurate conclusions can safely be drawn. First, it was never a satisfactory academic program. The men were not carefully selected. In the first unit to arrive was a man who had attended high school only one year alongside another who held a bachelor's degree from Oxford University in England. It took several weeks for the Academic Dean to convince the military authorities that such men should not take the same academic subjects. Secondly, individual men and whole units were withdrawn at what seemed to be the mere whim of armchair officers in the higher echelons at Maxwell Field, Alabama, or in Washington. Thirdly, there was no adequate orientation program to convince those cynical young men of the value of aca- demic subjects for trainees on their way to probable death in the "Battle of Britain."
The program actually proved more valuable from the viewpoint of the Army than from that of the College. Army inspectors called the Colby detachment "the best such unit in the country." Later the men themselves were high in their praise of the instruction, especially in physics and mathematics, and many of them attributed their later success as pilots or navigators to the basic instruction they received in a few short weeks at Colby.
As soon as the college authorities learned that the CTD program would close in the early summer of 1944, they turned their attention to the possible use by the Government of facilities on Mayflower Hill. The Navy appeared to be interested, and the Trustees authorized a special committee, of which William S. Newell, President of the Bath Ironworks, was a prominent member, to nego-
410
HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE
tiate with the Navy concerning the proposal to complete and utilize the May- flower Hill plant as a Naval hospital with a thousand beds.
Fortunately the proposal was not adopted. Had such a hospital been de- veloped on Mayflower Hill, the plan for normal, civilian use of the new site might have been delayed by many years. Although no one could foresee in the spring of 1944 that in another year the war would be ended, that eventuality made pos- sible early resumption of the College's own building program and the gradual removal of all college activities to the Hill. A big Naval hospital would have made that early resumption impossible.
Surprisingly the first president of Colby got into World War II. On October 31, 1943, there was launched at South Portland, with appropriate ceremonies attended by President Bixler and other college officials, the Liberty Ship Jeremiah Chaplin. Faculty and alumni presented a collection of books for the ship's library. It was a fitting observance of the 125th anniversary of the starting of classes by Jeremiah Chaplin in 1818.
No sooner had Colby students left the campus for military service than they began to clamor for academic credit because of war experience. The issue had to be faced by every American college, and at first, rather chaotically, each col- lege acted alone; but early in 1942 a National Conference of College and Uni- versity Presidents adopted a resolution to which Colby and most other colleges subscribed.
Credit shall be awarded only to individuals who, upon completion of military service, shall apply to the institution for credit and who shall meet such tests as the institution may prescribe.
By May in 1943 the colleges were generally opposed to blanket credit for "simply being in the service." Therefore the Colby faculty then voted:
The Faculty of Colby College records its approval of the objectives of the U.S. Armed Forces Institute for continuing education in the armed services, and agrees to give consideration to the educational records of service men as tested and described in each individual case by the Institute, reserving the right to evaluate credit for such records towards the Colby degree according to the practice and standards of Colby College. This faculty disapproves the granting of so-called blanket credit to men in the armed services without regard to actual educa- tional achievement.
That decision regularized and standardized the granting of war credit. A national commission on credit for military experience and education in the services was set up, and that commission, in cooperation with USAFI, published periodically comprehensive lists of suggested credits, both at high school and college level. It was the practice at Colby to follow almost completely those national sugges- tions.
The Committee on Standing, though inclined to apply the USAFI regula- tions rather strictly, did grant a number of exceptions. Among the most interest- ing was the case of a ministerial student who had met all graduation requirements except passing the Reading Knowledge Examination in a foreign language. The man had tried that examination twice, and had failed it both times. He was, in the spring of 1944, the pastor of a church in York County and he wanted to
411
NEW PRESIDENT AND A NEW WAR
become a chaplain in the Navy. The Commission of Army and Navy Chaplains in Washington had notified the College that they could not appoint as chaplain a man who did not hold a college degree, and they asked Colby to consider the early granting of the degree to this otherwise worthy applicant for a chaplaincy. The faculty voted to recommend to the Trustees the granting of this man's degree, waiving the Reading Knowledge requirement. That there were plenty of die- hards for rigid academic requirements even in war time is shown by the fact that the faculty vote was by no means unanimous. While eighteen members voted to waive the requirement, eleven stalwarts voted No.
The foreign language requirement continued to be a bone of contention until in the fall of 1944 the faculty voted that, at the discretion of the Committee on Standing, the requirement could be waived in the case of any former Colby student returning to the College after honorable discharge from military service, provided such student could otherwise complete his degree requirements in one additional term of residence.
By February, 1945, the College had acted upon 64 war credit cases, and had allowed credit for such programs as the Army Air Force CTD and Flight Schools, for Weather Forecasters' School, for various Officers Candidate Schools, for the Physical Training Instructors' Course, for the Navy V-12 Program, for Midship- men's School, for Naval Supply and Storekeeper's Schools, and more than a dozen other kinds of service training.
One of the most important effects of World War II on the College was the enrollment of numerous veterans as a result of the so-called "G. I. Bill of Rights," the several public laws passed by the Congress to enable veterans to secure edu- cation and training after discharge from service. The soldiers of World War I had enjoyed no such privilege, and economic conditions in the early 1920's had hit some of them very hard. Too many of those men who had started college be- fore 1917 failed to return after the war. But after the close of the war in 1945 the situation was vastly different. Men who wished to return to college and those who wished to begin a college course could now do so with liberal financial assistance from the Government.
A tiny trickle of veterans enrolled in September, 1945, but it was February of 1946 before as many as fifty registered at Colby. The faculty were at once happily surprised. Instead of being cynical and supercritical, ready to take any short cut to a degree, these men who had faced death in combat were extremely serious and determined to get the highest values from a college experience. It is true that they were irked by the conventional social restrictions and that, especially at first, they were impatient with abstractions and intent upon immediate, prac- tical returns. But as time went on their profound seriousness and determination affected favorably the whole campus scene.
In June, 1946, the faculty voted that, for any veteran who on return to col- lege could otherwise complete all graduation requirements in a single semester, the foreign language requirement should be waived; and that those who could complete the degree requirements in one full year need take only the first year of a foreign language in college.
By 1956 more than 1200 veterans of World War II and the Korean War had enrolled at Colby under one or another of the Congressional acts granting educational assistance to veterans. Among them the attrition was much less than it had been before the war among civilian students. A surprising propor- tion of the service men carried through to graduation, and some of the achieve- ments were amazing. One boy had done so poorly before entering service that,
412
HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE
although originally attending for two and a half years, he could be given only a year and a half of credit when the Committee on Standing reluctantly permitted him to return as a veteran. He completed his degree requirements in two years, with almost a straight "A" record. More than twenty boys who had been dropped from college before the war for failure to meet academic standards were given a second chance when they reapplied as veterans. There was not a single re- peated failure in the entire group.
The greatest problem faced by the College because of the predominant pres- sure of veterans was social rather than academic. In scholarship they were an inspiration to the eighteen-year-olds who came fresh from high school. But those teenagers were all too prone to imitate the social habits acquired by the older fel- lows under the stress of military service. The two groups were as oil and water in the difficulty of their mixing. Only when the younger group became again pre- dominant, did campus life become normal.
In spite of the difficulties, Colby came through the war without serious harm. To be sure, completion of the new campus was delayed, male enrollment suf- fered, classroom work was sometimes disrupted; but when the fighting was over, the College proved itself ready and capable to enter upon the greatest period of achievement and national acclaim in its long history.
CHAPTER XXXIX
Fitting Colby To Its New Clothes
J ULIUS SEELYE BIXLER was not the first of Colby's scholarly presidents. Both Albion Woodbury Small and Nathaniel Butler, Jr., won national fame as scholars, and long before the twentieth century James Tift Champlin had gained recognition as a translator and writer of scholarly papers in the field of Greek and Roman classics. But Bixler was the first Colby president to have achieved scholarly fame before he entered the presidential office. Confidently trustees, faculty and alumni looked to him to make Colby a college academically worthy of its splendid new campus. Their hopes were not in vain. Under Seelye Bixler the college was made to fit its new suit of clothes.
Born in 1894, the son of the Reverend James Wilson Bixler, prominent Congregational clergyman of New Hampshire and a member of both branches of that state's legislature, Julius Seelye Bixler was graduated from Amherst Col- lege in 1916, then spent a year as instructor at the American College in Madura, India. In 1917 he was studying at Union Theological Seminary when he felt the call to enter his country's military service. After discharge he became a grad- uate student at Amherst, at the same time serving as Director of Religious Activities at his alma mater. He received the Master of Arts degree from Amherst in 1920. During the next two years he was lecturer at the American University in Beirut, Syria. Matriculating for his doctorate in the field of philosophy at Yale, he re- ceived his Ph.D. degree in 1924, and at once joined the faculty of Smith College, where he remained for nine years and was rapidly promoted to a full professor- ship in religion and biblical literature. During sabbatical leave in 1928-29 he studied at the University of Freiburg, Germany. In 1933 he joined the faculty of the Harvard Divinity School as Bussey Professor of Theology. During a leave of absence in 1938 he conducted research at the University of Zurich, Switzer- land. Amherst College conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1939.
When he came to Colby, Dr. Bixler was already widely known as the author of important books and articles on philosophy and religion. Enthusiastic reviews had greeted his books Religion in the Philosophy of William James, Immortality and the Present Mood, and Religion for Free Minds. He had been a contributor to the opening number of The American Scholar, quarterly publication of the Phi Beta Kappa Society; a co-editor of The Nature of Religious Experience; and a contributor of important chapters in such books as Religious Realism, The Church Through Half a Century, and the volume on Whitehead in the Library of Living Philosophers.
Throughout his eighteen years as President of Colby College, Dr. Bixler continued his scholarly pursuits both as writer and lecturer. Books and articles
414
HISTORY OF COLBY COLLEGE
came steadily from his pen, and he was in demand as lecturer for some of the most famous endowed university programs. Twice he was named as one of the highly selected leaders to conduct the Seminar in American Studies at Salzburg, Austria. By his own illustrious example Seelye Bixler set an unprecedented mark of creative scholarship upon a small Maine college.
The hectic days when classes were held on both the old and the new campus are now like a remembered nightmare although, as the fictional Hyman Kaplan would have expressed it, the "daymare" was bad enough. Alumni recollections of the "Blue Beetle" are not entirely pleasant, for that college-owned bus was fre- quently breaking down or freezing up. Happy was the day when the College de- cided to go out of the transportation business and negotiated a contract with a local company for that service. At the height of the service, when the same stu- dents had to be moved back and forth between the two campuses several times a day, the buses made as many as sixteen round trips. As long as any college work continued on the old campus or any students still resided there, the bus service had to be operated. From its beginning in 1942, that service was unin- terrupted for ten years. Not until the erection of the Life Sciences Building in 1952 and the opening of Foss and Woodman Halls was the old campus abandoned and the bus service stopped. That facility had been a costly necessity, draining the college treasury of an average of $15,000 a year for a total of $150,000.
In September, 1945, the College returned to its normal pre-war calendar, opening on September 22. Enrollment increased rapidly, to 895 in 1946, and to 1084 in 1947. By 1956 the number had reached 1132.
As the years went by, the proportion of Maine students continued to de- crease, in spite of preference, especially in respect to scholarship aid, given to students from within the state. All the private colleges of Maine were losing native boys and girls to the state university, where expenses were much lower. In 1956, Colby had 370 students from Massachusetts and only 231 from Maine. From New York came 137 boys and girls; from Connecticut 144; from New Jersey 85. Altogether the Colby students in that year came from 26 states, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, the Virgin Islands, and six foreign countries. The total enrollment of 1132 was composed of 657 men and 475 women.
In the Alumnus President Bixler, in 1957, gave his opinion of the enrollment situation:
We will never knowingly expand to a point where we lose the obvious advantage of the kind of community life where teachers know their students and students know each other. We will not expand if it means lowering our standards of admission. But there are three strong rea- sons for considering a gradual increase in size. First, Colby must as- sume its share of responsibility for the increasing numbers who seek a college education. Secondly, the addition of two or three hundred students would enable us to administer the college more economically. Thirdly, an expansion would give us more diversified offerings in the curriculum and would provide more student leaders for our various activities. If we should increase eventually to 1500 students, I do not think the size would be unmanageable. A co-educational college of 1500 can retain more of the advantages of a small college than one that is not co-educational. The units into which the community is broken up give the total life of the campus a different character. Let me em- phasize that we cannot even begin to expand now. We are practically bursting at the seams. Expansion will not begin until we have the
415
FITTING COLBY TO ITS NEW CLOTHES
buildings to be provided by the Fulfillment Program, and then it will be gradual and carefully controlled.1
Not in the twentieth century had any president of Colby College behaved as if the institution were an ivory tower, but when Seelye Bixler became presi- dent, almost every college of liberal arts was accused of being a smug community isolated from life's realities. It was the era of the "egg heads," the "arm-chair idealists," the "dreamers who dream because they can't do things." A low premium was placed upon thought and contemplation. When Colby College elected a religious philosopher as its chief executive, it was easy for the public to think that not only ivory, but solid bone ivory had encased the College. But President Bixler at once revealed that his warm, friendly, humane qualities would never permit him to be a recluse scholar. In November, 1942, he stated his position publicly.
The 'Ivory Tower' idea of a college has been dealt a death blow. Peo- ple see that the basic purpose of any college is to serve the needs of society. A college no longer has the right to serve a leisure class or to offer merely a cultural veneer or to deal only with the gracious amenities of life. Culture is as important as ever, and training in graciousness and the beauty of living will never cease to have a legitimate claim. Yet these are not primary aims, but rather by-products of the college man's task, which is that of rigorous discipline in thinking through the social problem. I am still old-fashioned enough to believe that boys and girls can be taught to think straight and be enabled to face the terrifically complex issues of our modern society with confidence that its problems can be solved.2
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.