YALE
PRESIDENT HADLEY’S VIEWS.
ng extracts from his report for the year 1899-1900
eater on to the alumni on Commencement Day.)
SOPHOMORE SOCIETIES.
A matter which, though now discussed
chiefly in connection with the Academi-
cal Department, has great importance
for the future reputation of Yale as a
whole, is the secret society system. The
growth in numbers of students attending
the college has strained the old frame-
work of college societies. When there
were but a hundred and forty students
in a class, two societies of thirty-five
men each could enroll one-half of the
students among their number,—substan-
tially all whose pecuniary circumstances
and social tastes rendered it important
for them to become members. With
classes of three hundred instead of a
hundred and forty this condition of
things has wholly changed. The diffi-
culty has been partially met, but for
various reasons could not be completely
met, by the introduction of new_socie-
ties side by side with the old. It was
felt most acutely in Sophomore year be-
cause, owing to the abolition of the an-
cient Sophomore societies nearly a quar-
ter of a century ago, the new ones
which had grown up in their places were
smaller and more secret than those of
Junior year. When a very small num-
ber of men, barely a sixth of the whole
class, were thus early elected to a
coveted position from which all their
fellows were excluded, the result was
obviously and necessarily bad for many
of those outside, and for the interests of
the College as a whole. It tended to
set the majority of a class in an atti-
tude of antagonism to that minority who,
in the interests of the University, should
have been their leaders instead of their
antagonists. The most concrete evi-
dence of the evil of this state of things
is seen in the election of non-society men
to important offices in the gift of the
class, not because they were the best
men for the offices in question, but be-
cause they were not members of Sopho-
more societies.
Under these circumstances, strong
pressure was brought to.bear upon the
Faculty for the abolition of these or-
ganizations, and a petition to that effect
was presented by nearly all the non-
society men in the Senior class. Al-
though they fully recognized the exist-
ence of the evils, the members of the
Faculty in general deemed it extremely
unadvisable to take immediate and radi-
cal action. Mere abolition by act of the
Faculty, without some clear public under-
standing as to what was to follows,
seemed on the whole more likely to do
harm than good. It might readily tend,
as did similar action at Harvard more
than a generation ago, to perpetuate the
existence of these self-same societies in
a less resnonsible form. Moreover, the
evil was not of a kind which could
readily be treated by Faculty edicts. The
Sophomore societies themselves had
violated no College law, and had done
few specific things which could be made
grounds for criticism against them.
They were no more than a manifestation
of an evil. The real evil could be
reached only by voluntary action of the
College as a whole.
The democratic spirit of Yale is to be
maintained primarily by the students;
secondarily by the public sentiment of
the alumni behind the students; thirdly,
and in relatively slight degree only, by
the legislation of the Faculty. That
body can do little more than provide
that the general conditions shall be fav-
orable to the maintenance of a sound
public sentiment on these matters. At
the crisis which the discussion has
reached, the faculty has felt warranted
in insisting that the control of the socie-
ties should be left for the moment in the
hands of the upper classmen, who have
had time for a more intelligent view of
the factors of the problem than have the
men who are just beginning the Sopho-
more year. :
To go further than this would
be simply to take the responsi-
bility for the maintenance of Yale de-
mocracy out of the hands of the stu-
dents, where it really belongs, because
they and they alone have it in their
power to keep it unimpaired. Only as
a last resort, if it should become clearly
and obviously apparent that the evils of
the present system are to be handled in
no other way, would it be wise to inter-
vene by direct legislation. The mem-
bers of the Faculty are to be comniended
for the moral courage which they have
shown, in preferring to bear the impu-
é Se ee
rae oe are
if a bad oa 5 Ss
YALE FRESHMAN CREW
Stroke, Bogue. 1%, R. Schley, (capt.) 6, Sargent. 5, Brown. 4, Trumbull.
Photo by Pach.
3, Hewitt. 2, Strong. bow, K. Schley.
tation of cowardice which has been cast
upon them in this matter, rather than
to pursue a course which would have
been brave in appearance, but which
would really have sacrificed the future
to the present.
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL. .
The problem of social life and order
among the students of the Scientific
School is one which is engaging the
thought of the authorities to an increas-
ing degree. In the days of its infancy,
this school was a place for specialists,
imbued with zeal for work. Such men
needed few rules of discipline, and their
social life was left to take care of itself.
But as the Sheffield Scientific School
has become a college in the wider sense
of the term, and as more students have
resorted to it for a general education
without that seriousness of professional
aim which characterized their predeces-
sors, the need for organized regulation
has increased.
There are two agencies which at
present exercise some control over the
life of the Sheffield student outside of
his purely official relations. One is the
dormitory system which has been estab-
lished by the several societies; the other
is the work of the Sheffield Branch of
Yale Young Men’s Christian Associa-
tion. But the time has come when ques-
tions of social life and dormitory life
must be taken up on a larger scale, with
plans which will reach the student more
generally, and do away with that danger
of isolation and irresponsibility which
besets the freshman, left to himself in
the midst of a city. The destruction of
the wooden house on College Street
which had furnished the very inadequate
quarters in which the Association had
been doing its excellent work, has
brought to the attention of its friends
the need of a really worthy building
for a center of the religious and social
life of the Scientific School; and there
is reason to hope that their wishes will
meet with a prompt and generous re-
sponse.
THE MEDICAL SCHOOL CHANGE.
Among the professional schools, it is
the Medical Department which can re-
port the most striking change. The pur-
chase of a large and well situated block
of land adjoining the Hospital marks the
beginning of a time when this institution
will be able to offer such facilities to
its students as it never has before; and
it is confidently hoped that the Bi-cen-
tennial anniversary will see that land
occupied by one or more buildings
adapted to modern needs. The appoint-
ment of Dr. Otto G. Ramsay, of Johns
Hopkins, to the chair of Gynecology,
is not only valuable as strengthening
the teaching force of the School in gen-
eral, but preéminently so in paving the
way for a closer possible coOperation
between School and Hospital than has
existed in the past.
The disinterested devotion of the
Faculty of the Medical School, in the
face of discouraging circumstances, is
at last beginning to reap well-deserved
fruit. The School stands to-day intel-
lectually as it never stood before. Ma-
terial prosperity can hardly fail to fol-
low.
ADVANCE IN LAW.
In the instruction furnished by the
Faculty of this School, the most im-
portant and far-reaching change is the
offer of a choice between two law courses
in the Senior year of the Academic De-
partment. One of these is intended to
meet the needs of those who study the
elements of law as part of a general
education; the other is intended as a
basis for subsequent study in a profes-
sional school here or elsewhere. By
thus differentiating their courses, the
members of the Law Faculty enable
themsélves to meet thoroughly the needs
of two different classes of men which
were so far distinct that it was difficult
to handle them together. It is hoped
that the outcome of this experiment will
be not only a saving of time and increase
of thoroughness of professional study
among those who intend to make the
law their life work, but also a basis of
closer relations between these two de-
partments, and perhaps a model for such
relations between other departments o
the University as a whole.
THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL DRAWS CLOSER.
This same tendency toward closer
union is seen in the prospectus of the
Theological Department for the coming
year. Hitherto the students in the Yale
Divinity School have been—officially, at
any rate—kept by themselves. If they
utilized the services of teachers in
other departments it was a personal
matter, outside the cognizance of the
Theological Faculty. Under the new
system, provision is made whereby the
candidate for the ministry may learn, and
is encouraged to know, those principles
of history and sociology and economics
which the courses of the Graduate
School offer in such large abundance.
The reforms in the system of beneficiary
aid which is being seriously agitated
will, in conjunction with this widening
of the curriculum, tend to make the
graduate of the Yale Divinity School
in the future a man of wider Christian
influence, because he will be in an in-
creasing degree a man of the world also.
PRACTICAL MUSIC INSTRUCTION.
In the reports of the Schools of Art
and of Music there is also found this
salutary urgency for a closer connection
with the life of the students of other
departments. It is specially urged that
there should be chance for the recogni-
tion of the teaching of practical music
as part of a college course. Without
underrating the difficulties in so doing,
or prejudging a final adjustment of the
case, it is safe to assure the members of
these departments of the cordial sym-
pathy of Yale in this endeavor. Every
effort will meantime be made to provide
the School of Music with quarters more
adequate than those which it enjoys at
present.
A NOTABLE COURSE OF LECTURES.
Through the generosity of Mr. Wil-
liam E. Dodge of New York City, a
eift of $30,000 has been received by the
University, whose income is to be de-
voted to a course of lectures on The
Responsibilities of Citizenship. In the
words of Mr. Dodge’s own letter, he
“desires to make a gift to the University,
for the purpose of promoting among its
students and graduates, and among the
educated men of the United States; an
understanding of the duties of Christian
citizenship, and a sense of personal re-
sponsibility for the performance of those ©
duties.” And it is his further desire
“that the income of the fund should be
paid each year to a lecturer of distin-
guished attainments and high conception
of civic responsibilities; who shall de-
liver a course of lectures on a_ topic
whose understanding will contribute to
the formation of an intelligent public
sentiment, of high standards of the duty
of a Christian citizen, and of habits of
action to give effect to these sentiments
and these standards.” The sum thus.
placed at the disposal of the Corporation
should enable Yale University each year
to secre a lecturer who will be not
