College Green

“ Upon their view had burst the wide, gently undulating green slopes of Hamilton Campus. While the grounds surrounding the majority of institutions of learning are laid out with an eye to the decorative, Hamilton campus has a peculiar, living charm of its own that perhaps none other has ever possessed. It is not that its thick short grass grows any greener than that of other campuses. Still it is more pleasing to the eye. The noble growth of elm, beech and maple, shading the lawns at graceful distances apart carries a personality that one feels but can hardly express by description. ”

“ Imagine a university and a campus of forty-seven acres of lawn and grove where Trinity Church stands in New York or where the post office stands in Chicago or St. Louis. In Washington we have something like it in the mall where the National Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Agricultural Department are. Trinity College, Dublin, has an equally expansive setting of green grass and grove and flowering shrubs, cricket grounds, and tennis courts, surrounded on all sides by business houses, clubs, and hotels. It is like an island of verdure in the midst of an ocean of trade and commerce. ”

“ It was a little apprentice-shop where one was further equipped for making money. The college itself was a little, slovenly laboratory for the factory.
A harsh and ugly disillusion came over her again, the same darkness and bitter gloom from which she was never safe now, the realization of the permanent substratum of ugliness under everything. As she came to the college in the afternoon, the lawns were frothed with daisies, the lime-trees hung tender and sunlit and green ”

“ It would be much worse in College Hall than in Prep Hall. Green Cap Week had started in College Hall for the freshmen. In a year or so the Preps had taken up this light form of hazing and applied Green Cap Week regulations to all new girls regardless of class. Mrs. Cole was constantly on guard for fear they would overdo it. She heartily approved of one rule, however. No college freshman or new girl could leave the campus the entire week. Prep girls never could leave unchaperoned. Thinking over the rules, Mimi wondered if there’d ever be time to go to town. ”

“ But it has its own share of historic associations, and although the big elm in the center of the campus was not planted until 1812 it has shaded many youths who in later years have by good deeds and great accomplishments endeared themselves to country and alma mater.
In the middle of the last century, when Erskine was little more than an academy, it was often called "the little green school at Centerport." It is not so little now, but it's greener than ever. Wide-spreading elms grow everywhere ”

“ Green began to think that a university career might be looked at from more than one point of view. But as old prejudices are not so easily overthrown as the lath-and-plaster erections of mere newly-formed opinion, Mr. Green was not yet won over by Mr. Larkyns' arguments. "There was my father," he said, "who was one of the worthiest and kindest men living; and I believe he never went to college, nor did he think it necessary that I should go; and I trust I'm no worse a man than my father."
"Ah! Green," replied the rector; "the old argument! But you must not judge the present age by the past ”

“ It is only by constant care that they are made to thrive and all sorts of storms are likely to rise out of a clear sky and blight them. Some of the seeds one thought would surely grow the fastest are total disappointments, while others that one just planted to fill in, fairly astonish one by their growth, but if at the end of the freshman year [Pg 241] the garden looks green and well cared for, it's safe to say it will keep on growing through the sophomore and junior years and bloom at the end of four years. That's the peculiarity about college gardens. ”

“ Verdant Green learned many things during his freshman's term, and, among others, he discovered that the quiet retirement of college-rooms, of which he had heard so much, was in many cases an unsubstantial idea, founded on imagination, and built up by fancy. ”

“ Eighteen pupils have left the college during the year, and five have left the primary department. The health of the institution has been excellent, not a single death having occurred during the year.
The appropriation of $70,000, made by Congress on the 10th of June last, by means of which the purchase of Kendall Green was consummated, was of great benefit to the institution, as it is now provided with one hundred acres of land, affording ample space for gardening, farming, play-grounds, &c. ”

“ Green Street Green really has a green: a thing which in a world where New College, Oxford, and the numerous Newports throughout the country are among the oldest of institutions and places, and where villages with the prefix “Great” are almost inevitably among the smallest, was by no means to be counted upon as a certainty. ”

“ But freshmen cannot learn the mysteries of college etiquette in a day.
However, we are anticipating. They had not yet got to Oxford, though, from the pace at which they were going, it appeared as if they would soon reach there; for the coachman had given up his seat and the reins to the box-passenger, who appeared to be as used to the business as the coachman himself; and he was now driving them, not only in a most scientific manner, but also at a great pace. Mr. Green was not particularly pleased with the change in the four-wheeled government ”

“ Green, after hearing divers anecdotes of his son's college-life, carefully prepared for home-consumption; "now tell us what you've learnt in Oxford."
"Why," replied our hero, as he reflected on his freshman's career, "I have learnt to think for myself, and not to believe every thing that I hear; and I think I could fight my way in the world; and I can chaff a cad—"
"Chaff a cad! ”

“ The eyes of the newcomers were at once focussed on the stately gray stone building that stood in the center of a wide stretch of green campus, shaded by great trees. At various points of the campus were situated smaller buildings which Mabel Ashe pointed out as [Pg 38] Science Hall, the gymnasium, laboratory, library and chapel. In Overton Hall, Mabel explained, were situated certain recitation rooms, the offices of the president, the dean and other officials of the college. Around the campus were the various houses in which the more fortunate of the hundreds of students lived. ”

“ Brongniart of the head of his Calymene Macrophthalma. If this belongs to the true macrophthalma, our species under that name is entirely distinct. Since our work had been prepared for the press, Dr. J. J. Cohen, of the Baltimore College, has shown us the fragment of a calymene from Berkley, Virginia, which agrees with Brongniart's description of the macrophthalma, and with the above fossil from Dudley. We regret that the imperfection of the fossil prevents our giving a satisfactory cast of it. ”

“ Sustainability requires having engagement written into the prescribed course description in the campus catalogue and securing commitment from the department to support that component whenever the class is offered. Even better, making an engagement experience or service-learning class a requirement for the major, for a minor or a certificate program, or for the college’s general education requirements will enormously strengthen sustainability. ”

“ They saw little of men in other colleges, so that a man might have a reputation for ability in his own society without gaining any in the larger world of Oxford. It so happened with Green. Though his few intimate friends perceived his powers, they had so little intercourse with the rest of the University, either by way of breakfasts and wine-parties, or at the University debating society, 132 or in athletic sports, that he remained unknown even to those among his contemporaries who were interested in the same things, and would have most enjoyed his acquaintance. ”

“ The schools, colleges and universities number among their brightest and most brilliant pupils numerous Colored American youths, who are an honor to the cause of education and to their race. They have won scholarship prizes at Cornell University, at Amherst College, Simmons College, Columbia University, Wellesley College, Radcliffe College, Howard University, and in numerous public schools prizes have been awarded them against numbers of competitors. ”

“ The "undergraduate" does well to complain of the "alluring ease of the environment," for the growing tendency toward luxurious living if one cause of the wane of intellectual enthusiasm among college students. The New England colleges one hundred years ago provided a better environment for study than they provide for all their students to-day, and the most magnificent of modern graduate schools has yet to show whether it will prove more stimulating for scholarship than the humblest college of a generation ago. ”

“ Now firmly believing, as I do, that there are skill, invention, power, industry, and real mechanical genius, among the colored people, which will bear favorable testimony for them, and which only need the means to develop them, I am decidedly in favor of the establishment of such a college as I have mentioned. The benefits of such an institution would not be confined to the Northern States, nor to the free colored people. ”

“ Columbia University early announced that a university situated in such a city, full of problems at a time when "industrial and social progress is bringing the modern community face to face with social questions of the greatest magnitude, the solution of which will demand the best scientific study and the most honest practical endeavor," must provide facilities for bringing university study into connection with practical work. In 1901 definite practical courses shared honors of first place with the elementary or general course in college announcements. ”

“ In reply, it was remarked that the establishment of a colored college was attempted many years ago, and could not succeed, being regarded by many as an extravagant and uncalled-for measure; that it was too late in the day for colored people themselves to found any exclusive institution; there are, now, colleges and academies where they can be admitted on equal terms with white students, and that, therefore, the necessity did not exist ”

“ It should be recalled that it was for the purpose of introducing and assimilating the laboratory that Eliot of Harvard opened the liberal college to the elective system. The hope was that the college would provide the conditions and the techniques for the liberalizing and humanizing of science. The present disorganization of our colleges is evidence that the problem is not yet solved. It is of utmost importance that it be solved. ”

“ During the years when the freshmen, sometimes as many as four hundred, were housed in the village because of the crowded conditions on the campus, the burden upon the Student Government Association, and especially upon the vice president and her senior assistants who had charge of the village work, was, in the opinion of many alumnae and some members of the faculty, heavier than they should have been expected to shoulder; for, when all is said, students do come to college primarily to pursue the intellectual life, rather than to be the monitors of undergraduate behavior. ”

“ The University must be more than an abstraction, it must be a body of living men. Now, how can this end be attained in a natural process of evolution, and how can you help in that process? I have drawn your attention to the fact that this University, differing from that of London, requires its students to have passed through affiliated colleges; but so far it has not provided that they, in their life as graduates, shall continue, in communion with their colleges. Now it is in and through the college that I believe this congregation of learned and scientific men, may best be obtained. ”

“ But even if intercollegiate games are detrimental to the interests of scholarship, is not the college spirit they create worth all they cost? Perhaps so. A university is more than a curriculum and a campus. It is more than the most elaborate student annual can depict. Even in Carlyle's day, it was more than he called it: a true university was never a mere 'collection of books.' It is the spirit that giveth life, and 'college spirit' is certainly a name to conjure with. The first question is what we mean by college spirit. ”

“ The multiplication of such institutions, the increase in number of students, and the confusion of professional and trade schools have robbed the familiar phrases of their meanings. To a far greater degree than we realize, the liberal arts and sciences have themselves disappeared and what remains of them has been confused in the minds of administrators and teachers as well as in the minds of the people, all of whom now need the education that the liberal college should provide. ”

“ The student body is not only thoroughly democratic, but it is composed of earnest, conscientious, hard-working students, who appreciate their opportunity of obtaining a thorough, practical education.
The college is situated on the outskirts of Denton, in a campus of seventy acres of rising ground overlooking the city and surrounding country. It is well supplied with large, [615] shady trees, and is covered with Bermuda grass. In the rear is a fine grove of oaks, where it is proposed to erect additional dormitories and class-rooms when the financial growth of the school admits of it. ”

“ This was the theory of the middle-age university and the design of collegiate foundations in their origin. Time and circumstances have brought about a total change. The colleges no longer promote the researches of science, or direct professional study. Here and there college walls may shelter an occasional student, but not in larger proportions than may be found in private life. Elementary teaching of youths under twenty is now the only function performed by the university, and almost the only object of college endowments. ”