Abstract
In his popular reminiscences of college life around the turn of the twentieth century, Yale alumnus Henry Seidel Canby described a campus pervaded by a student-defined romantic activism. The strenuous life of college activities in this era, he claimed, defined achievement in a way that fostered the bustling pace of extracurricular participation. Students were encouraged to join a host of clubs, fraternities, and athletic teams in order to furnish a campus identity and secure prestige in the competitive and hierarchical world of college honors. In addition, Canby suggested that this world was one of intense loyalty and insularity. Reflective of the progressive homogenization of student age and stage of life, campuses of this era generated a focused and intensive peer culture. Driven by its own values and inspiring a passionate devotion to those ideals, the college was, he suggested, a “community that defined its own success, pursued it constantly, and was arrogantly indifferent to the ideals of others, asking its members for complete and whole-hearted allegiance.” In contexts where “the young made a world to suit themselves,” that world cultivated a love for alma mater that eschewed external loyalties in favor of an active, campus-centered existence.1
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Notes
Henry S. Canby, Alma Mater: The Gothic Age of the American College (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1936), 24. See also Leslie, Gentlemen and Scholars, 111, 205.
Woodrow Wilson, “What Is College For?” in Arthur Link ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 19 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 344–346.
Ralph Henry Gabriel, Religion and Learning at Yale (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958), 209.
Owen Johnson, Stover at Yale (New York: Collier Books, 1912), 148.
See also Joseph Kett, Rites of Passage: Adolescence in America, 1790 to the Present (New York, Basic Books, 1977), 175–176.
At the University of Delaware, association leaders continually found themselves battling to convince students that the YMCA chapter was governed by Delaware men for the prosperity of the campus rather than the YMCA national headquarters. J.H. Mitchell, “The Beginning of the Y.M.C.A. at Delaware—Reminiscences,” The Alumni News 2, no. 2 (April 1916): 7–9.
H.H. Horne, “The Place of the Student Young Men’s Christian Association,” Int 25, no. 9 (June 1903): 195. Some of those “representative students” criticized the YMCA for its pious posturing and exacting religious requirements. A student at Knox College spoke of YMCA members as a “pious little enclave” that marred Friday night entertainment with its “devotional sessions.”
See Hermann R. Muelder, Missionaries and Muckrakers: The First Hundred Years of Knox College (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 227.
A. Bruce Minear, “Maintaining Bible Class Attendance,” Int 27, no. 3 (December 1904): 62–63.
Bruce Barton, “Out of the ‘Y’ and in again,” The Outlook 79 (1904): 257. See also Muelder, Missionaries and Muckrackers, 244.
Ibid. See also Thomas Le Duc, Piety and Intellect at Amberst College, 1865–1912 (New York: Arno Press, 1969), 142.
Frank V. Slack, The Interesting and Enlisting of Fraternity Men in the Work of the Student Young Men’s Christian Association (New York: Young Men’s Christian Association Press, 1908), 5.
John R. Mott, College Association Buildings (New York: College Series no. 302, 1891), 5. See also Neil McMillan, Jr., “America’s Experience in Student Young Men’s Christian Association Buildings,” 6; Pence, The YMCA and Social Need.
Mott, College Association Buildings, 11, 13. See also W.W. Berry, “Religious Life in the University of Tennessee,” Int 24, no. 9 (June 1902): 209.
Executive Committee of the University of Oregon, “Prospectus of the Proposed Building for the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations of the University of Oregon.” AWSCF, Box 76, Folder 620; APJRM, 109; Report of the President of the YMCA of Rutgers College, for year ending March 13, 1912, 10. Records of the Young Men’s Christian Association of Rutgers College, Record Group 48/14/01, Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers College. See also James Edward Gilson, “Changing Student Lifestyle at the University of Iowa, 1880–1900” (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1980), 87–88; Mott, College Association Buildings, 15.
Bates College, “Annual Report to the President 1912–1913,” 89. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, Bates College; Robert C. McMath, Jr., Engineering the New South: Georgia Tech, 1885–1985 (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1985), 111; Mott, College Association Buildings, 15.
Both Dodge Hall and Earl Hall were donated in memory of William Dodge’s son, Earl, who died at the age of 25. “Dodge Hall at Princeton,” Int 23, no. 3 (December 1900): 65; “Dedication of Earl Hall,” Int 24, no. 7 (April 1902): 172–173; “Dedication of Madison Hall, University of Virginia,” Int 28, no. 1 (October 1905): 73–74; “The Cornell Christian Association,” Cornell Alumni News (January 24, 1900): 2. JRMP, Box 150, Folder 2499; “Union College Association Building,” Int24, no. 1 (October 1901): 15–16; F.B. Rankin, “The New Association Building at the University of North Carolina,” Int 29, no. 8 (May 1907): 195; McMath, Jr., Engineering the New South, 110; Austin, A Century of Religion at the University of Michigan, 28–29;
Graduate Committee of the Yale Young Men’s Christian Association, Dwight Hall, Yale University, Its Origin, Erection, and Dedication (New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, 1887), 7–21.
Charles Brewster, A History of the Dartmouth Christian Association (Ann Arbor, MI: Edwards Brothers, 1927), 12–13; Gilson, “Changing Student Lifestyle at the University of Iowa,” 86–88;
Patricia Sleezer, “The Religious Struggle at the State University of Iowa.” Yale Divinity School, 1942, seminar paper. University of Iowa Archives. See also Harold Reinhart, “The History and Activities of the Iowa State College Young Men’s Christian Association, 1890–1947 (n.d.),” 1. Iowa State University Archives, YMCA Records, Record Group 22/10/00/03.
John R. Mott, How to Secure a College Association Building (New York: The International Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association, 1892).
Rankin, “The New Association Building at the University of North Carolina,” 195; Allen, “A History of the Young Men’s Christian Association at the University of Virginia,” 214; Hugh McIlhany, “Dedication of Madison Hall, University of Virginia,” Int 28, no. 1 (October 1905): 74. Luxurious by campus standards, Barnes Hall was valued at $55,000, Dwight Hall at $60,000, Murray-Dodge Hall at $100,000, and Earl Hall at $175,000. Competition clearly reigned in this arena, and schools were often driven to exceed the elegance of buildings at peer institutions. For typical examples, see “Student Association Building Campaigns,” Int 27, no. 3 (December 1904): 54–55; “Progress in Building Movements,” Int 27, no. 2 (November 1904): 36–38.
Honnold, “The History of the Y.M.C.A. of the University of Wisconsin,” 97–101; See also Mayer N. Zald, Organizational Change: The Political Economy of the YMCA (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 32.
For information on other local advisory boards, see, for example, Bates College, “Annual Report to the President 1911–1912,” 82. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, Bates College; John H. Safford, “The Advisory Committee of the College Association,” Int 29, no. 9 (June 1907): 222–223. Many “advisory boards” became “boards of directors” when buildings were secured.
The University of Toronto also had an early secretary. See Shedd, Two Centuries, 168–169. Schools often began by hiring part-time staff, securing full-time positions only when the positions usefulness had been verified. Charles D. Hurrey, The General Secretary of a Student Young Men’s Christian Association (New York: Young Men’s Christian Association Press, 1908), 3.
Hurrey, The General Secretary, 4–7. See also A.S. Johnstone, “The Spiritual Life of the Secretary,” in College Problems: A Study of the Religious Activities of College Men (Nashville: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1907), 64.
W.D. Weatherford, Student Secretaries in Training (New York: Young Men’s Christian Association Press, 1910), 9.
George Stewart, Life of Henry B. Wright (New York: Association Press, 1925), 14–16.
Milton C. Towner, ed. Religion in Higher Education (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1931), 299–301.
Arthur Reed Campbell, “Yale’s Unadvertised Side,” Private Book of the General Secretary, 1897–1900, 9. SCARP, Box 3, Folder 6; E.O. Jacobs, “Work for the Entering Class,” Int 31, no. 9 (June 1909): 225–226;
J.C. Prall, “Work for New Students the Opportunity of the Year,” Int 21, no. 8 (May 1898): 179–180; “State University,” CB 6, no. 7 (April 1884): 4; Allen, “A History of the Young Men’s Christian Association at the University of Virginia,” 152, 175.
A.F. Jackson, “Reaching New Students—Some Practical Methods,” Int 25, no. 9 (June 1903): 207–208. See also “Work for the Entering Class at Yale,” Int 21, no. 1 (October 1898): 18–19.
L.T. Savage, “Religious Life in a Typical State University of the West,” Int 22, no. 5 (February 1900): 105.
Robert Eskline, “Changing Student Religion at the State University of Iowa: 1880–1920” (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1976), 187.
Henry Seidel Canby, College Sons and College Fathers (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1915), 13.
See also H.A. Hunt, “Y.M.C.A. Department,” William and Mary College Monthly 9, no. 6 (April 1900): 271.
Lewis Sheldon Welch and Walter Camp, Yale, Her Campus, Class-Rooms, and Athletics (Boston: L.C. Page and Company, 1899), 55.
Edwin Starbuck, “How Shall We Deepen the Spiritual Life of the College,” Religious Education 4 (April 1909): 84–85.
W.W. Dillon, “A Spiritual Awakening in Every College,” Int 25, no. 4 (January 1903): 85–86. See also Heinzman, “The General Secretary,” 169–170; APJRM, 26.
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© 2007 David P. Setran
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Setran, D.P. (2007). Building a Campus Presence. In: The College “Y”. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230603387_5
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