1903-04 Volume 28 No 1–5 - Phi Delta Theta Scroll Archive

THE SCROLL. 159of the faculty to the students was distinctly paternal. 'Myson,' was Francis Wayland's characteristic way of addressinga student. The members of the faculty were usuallygray-haired men, chosen because of general dignity of characterand carriage, to teach any subjects which a reputablegentleman of the old school might be supposed to know.They occupied, as Oliver Wendell Holmes used to say, 'nota chair, but a whole settee.'Toward such men, the natural student attitude was thatof profound reverence, mitigated by rebellion. Studentswere treated as children, and they proceeded to act the partassigned them. Their life was picturesque indeed, butfreakish and juvenile. A network of small rules surroundedthem—such as the direction when to remove their hats, howto pass through the door, and the exact fines to be paid forunmannerly complaints at the steward's table.Now paternalism in college halls has vanished. The professor'slittle platform, 'six inches above contradiction,' cannot be carried into laboratory or seminar. He sits, or ratherstands, among his students, a mountain climber who hasscaled certain heights and beckons his fellow traveler on.For better, for worse, the fraternal conception has come,and come to stay.Who then shall look after the uncertain freshmen who,,two hundred and more, flock to our campus each September?If the paterfamilias has passed, if the old rules areburied in dusty boxes in the library, who shall look afterthe scores of boys who come to Brown each autumn fromour country towns, with small horizons, unformed ideals,and conscience still in the gristle? Who shall take in handthe new men who have always lived under the shadow ofthe university, and curiously imagine that to spend threehours a day in the classroom is really to go through college ?Nobody ?The plain fact is that part of the functions once exercisedby the faculty (in the days when James Manning was 'professorof the languages and other branches of learning')are now exercised, or should be, by the upper classmen.The men who have lived two^ or three years under thesevenerable elms have the right to assume, not airs of superiorityand lordship, but a real responsibility for the atmosphere,the tone, the traditions of our campus life. Sixmonths after graduation, a student may be a member of the