University Club

“ Sir,
'Since I find you take Notice of Clubs, I beg Leave to give you an Account of one in Oxford, which you have no where mention'd, and perhaps never heard of. We distinguish our selves by the Title of the Amorous Club, are all Votaries of Cupid, and Admirers of the Fair Sex. The Reason that we are so little known in the World, is the Secrecy which we are obliged to live under in the University. Our Constitution runs counter to that of the Place wherein we live: For in Love there are no Doctors, and we all profess so high Passion, that we admit of no Graduates in it. ”

“ The building is admirably constructed and contains dining-rooms, library, smoking and reading-rooms, billiard-room and bowling alleys. The dues are only $5.00 a year, and meals are furnished to students at $3.50 a week. The club has proved of great value in the social life of the university, by bringing together on a common ground the students of all departments, so keeping all the students in touch and helping to create a true university spirit. ”

“ Society," a University club primarily instituted as an association for the cultivation of oratory amongst undergraduates, which has now added to its central debating hall a library, dining-room, smoking-room, and the other adjuncts of a first-class club. ”

“ The club-book of an Eastern university, for example, records the existence at that institution of ninety different social organizations, the object of most of them being to bring men together [113-115] sociably. Such intermingling is vital for college friendship. It is true, as former Dean Henry P. Wright of Yale has said, that, to a student, a friend is a “fellow whom you know all about, and still like,” and for that reason the social organizations which bring men together in an intimacy closer than is found anywhere else are indispensable aids in the formation of lasting friendships. ”

“ I will mention but one thing more upon this head, besides what is farther alledged in the following volumes, which is the treatment that the Consitution-club received from the Magistrates and Rulers, as well as the inferior part of the university; a Club, which deserves immortal honour, and the highest encouragement, for thier zeal and services to the present happy settlement, in the most critical season; for which they were repaid at Oxford with persecution and disgrace, with injuries and hardships, and with the most partial and cruel treatment. ”

“ When a man is proposed, his name is written in a book, in which space is left for friends in the club to write their names in approval. After this, elections are in the hands of a committee. Like all Oxford clubs, Vincent's will always, I suppose, lean towards men of some special college or group of colleges; yet it is careful to elect all clubable blues, and, in point of fact, is representative of the university at large, as, for instance, the Hasty Pudding Club at Harvard, or the senior societies at Yale, to which, on the whole, it most nearly corresponds. ”

“ The college fraternity or the college club becomes responsible for a large and representative part of the undergraduate life in America. It is usually responsible for the histrionics in university life, and there is perhaps no literary tendency more pronounced in our colleges to-day than that toward the making of the drama. ”

“ This training the woman’s college and the woman’s club, when properly conducted, supply, the latter, especially, giving to women who have missed a college training the opportunity of keeping up intellectual life and of putting newly acquired knowledge to practical use in some line of economic endeavor or social service, for the day has not yet passed when the woman’s club may be styled the “middle-aged woman’s university.” ”

“ They tell him he may make his learning represent the people if he will extend his university until it becomes as universal as the kindergarten, and that he may at the same time increase his popularity with the select if he will devote more of his time and more of his energy to that branch of learning which was in olden times pursued in that secluded cloister called the campus, although it is better known to the polite society of our day through the banjo club, the football team, and the mask and wig club. ”

“ “Oh, no, I hate those arty little places. I like dining in a hotel full of all sorts of people. Dining in a club means you’re surrounded by people who're pretty much alike. Their membership in the club means they’re there because they are all interested in golf, or because they’re university graduates, or belong to the same political party or write, or paint, or have incomes of over fifty thousand a year, or something. I like ’em mixed up, higgledy-piggledy. ”

“ Of university clubs the United University is the oldest, the others being the Oxford and Cambridge, the New University, and others, the qualification for mem bership of winch would be that of connection with the chief universities. The naval and military clubs include the United Service, the Junior United Service, the Army and Navy, with numerous others intended for military and naval officers, and in some instances for officers of militia. ”

“ But is there not in every college adequate machinery for such expression of tastes? With the students’ associations, the women’s leagues, the Young Women’s Christian Association, literary associations, tennis clubs, golf clubs, garden clubs, walking clubs, journal clubs,—the multifarious club activities of almost any college, to which ability, or at least interest, is the test for admission, there should be no lack of opportunity for any student to encourage to the utmost any taste whatsoever. ”

“ In such an arrangement the hall would profit by the clubman as the clubman would gain influence through the hall. All undergraduates would thus be united in the general 270 university life in a way which is now undreamed of, and which is unlikely, as I think, even in the new Harvard Union. ”

“ Typical Harvard institutions, such as the Hasty Pudding Club, The Crimson, the Crew, etc., are painted with deft touches, which will fill the soul of every graduate with joy, and be equally as fascinating to all college students. ”

“ Besides these more formal organizations there are a number of department clubs, the Deutsche Verein, the Alliance Francaise, the Philosophy Club, the Economics Club, and informal groups such as the old Rhymesters' Club, which flourished in the late nineties, the Scribblers' which seems to have taken its place and enlarged its scope, the Social Study Circle, the little Socialist Club, and others through which the students express their intellectual and social interests. ”

“ In 1896 the Technology Club was started, occupying a building near the Institute and affording alumni and students the social advantages of a clubhouse. The alumni of the Institute now number two thousand three hundred and thirty-nine; they maintain an Alumni Association which holds annual meetings, and seven local branch associations which are scattered over the country from the Connecticut Valley to Colorado. ”

“ School Board Policy 5610 concerning "Student Clubs and Organizations" recognizes these student clubs as a "vital part of the total education program as a means of developing citizenship, wholesome attitudes, good human relations, knowledge and skills." App. 488. Board Policy 5610 also provides that each club shall have faculty sponsorship and that "clubs and organizations shall not be sponsored by any political or religious organization, or by any organization which denies membership on the basis of race, color, creed, sex or political belief." ”

“ Moreover, all the important preparatory schools, private and public, are certain to be represented by clubs of their alumni, some of which maintain scholarships but all of which do yeoman service scouting for athletes. Frequently there is a Cosmopolitan Club for foreign students and travelled Americans. And, finally, there are clubs to represent the various provinces of knowledge—the classics, philosophy, mathematics, the various sciences, and so on indefinitely. ”

“ The United encourages the formation of local literary or press clubs in cities or towns containing several members. These clubs generally publish papers, and hold meetings wherein the pleasures of literature are enlivened by those of the society. The most desirable form of club activity is that in which a high-school instructor forms a literary society of the more enthusiastic members of his class. ”

“ The Service Bureau lost no time in preparing and posting notices on the college bulletin board, and on those of the various campus houses, to the effect that they were prepared to take care of any requests for general services that might be made, and the immediate response with which their venture met was gratifying in the extreme. Certain of the club members found their spare time fully occupied in tutoring freshmen, while those who were skilled needlewomen were kept busy mending, making silk blouses, kimonos and even simple styles of gowns. ”

“ I hear a good deal about clubs and societies: how many there are, how important they are; how it is that, if a youth shall gain the whole of scholarship and all athletics and not 'make' a proper club, he shall still fall something short of success in college. Parents I meet who are more concerned about clubs than about either scholarship or deportment. They are concerned and at the same time bothered: so many strategies and chances the clubs involve ”

“ A president, above all her other duties, should see to it that the atmosphere of [Pg 5] the club is warm and friendly. If in other ways it is successful, if the study gives intellectual stimulus, and practical work is carried on effectively, still it is a failure if the members are either snobbish or unsympathetic. All the members of a club must be in harmony and work together in a spirit of comradeship if it is ever to reach its highest possibilities.
Last of all, should not a club extend its membership to as many as possible, rather than have a waiting list? ”

“ Members of college faculties want at least the opportunity of taking a more active part in the smaller as well as in the larger affairs of the college. Probably nearly every member of a college faculty belongs to a club that has rooms or a building of its own, and he finds there, hung in a conspicuous place, a "book of suggestions" wherein he is not only invited but even urged to enter any ideas he may have for the improvement of the club. ”

“ Let me state in brief, prosaic outline the circumstances which account for the gloom and solitude in which this room has remained now for nearly a century and a half.
In the second quarter of the eighteenth century the University possessed a great variety of clubs of a social kind. There were clubs in college parlours and clubs in private rooms, or in inns and [Pg 2] coffee-houses: clubs flavoured with politics, clubs clerical, clubs purporting to be learned and literary. ”

“ There ought at any rate to be some possible ground in reason for one's boiling over with joy that one is a son of Harvard, and was not, by some unspeakably horrible accident of birth, predestined to graduate at Yale or at Cornell.
Any college can foster club loyalty of that sort. The only rational ground for pre-eminent admiration of any single college would be its pre-eminent spiritual tone. But to be a college man in the mere clubhouse sense—I care not of what college—affords no guarantee of real superiority in spiritual tone. ”

“ For instance, a professor from the nearest agricultural college may lecture on pure milk; on water supply the town engineer may speak; on the question of bettering the public schools the state superintendent may be invited. It is better to spend a whole club year in study and accomplish only one practical work for the town betterment, than enthusiastically to begin on a dozen lines [Pg 10] and yet really gain nothing substantial in the end. ”

“ Without waiting for dessert, or even to fill his pipe, Elliot left the table, walked slowly up the street, through the campus, climbed the stairs to his room and locked the door.
When a man does not appear at the club at meal time the natural inference is that he is a guest at some other club ”

“ As soon as a newcomer gains distinction, as he does at once if he has the capacity, he is noticed by the leading men of the college, and is thus in a way to be taken into the life of the university. From the college breakfast it is only a step to the Gridiron, from the college eight to Vincent's, and from the debating society to the Chatham or the Canning. These, like all undergraduate clubs, are in yearly need of new members, and the older men in college are only too glad to urge the just claims of the younger for good-fellowship sake, and for the general credit of their institution. ”

“ Yet I have a suspicion that the college, both in and out of the clubs, has you pretty well sized up; I have a notion that among those outside of the clubs to whom this amusing little story of your 'success' is quite well known, there are plenty of real men who would scorn your so-called success—at such a price. I have an idea that your own club-mates would resent your claiming to be a representative club-man as much as non-club-men would object to your calling yourself a representative Princetonian. ”

“ Clubs which have a small yearly fee sometimes buy a book or so a year and keep them as a nucleus of a library.
As to writing club papers, there personality [Pg 19] comes in, and education and training, and these give a certain individuality of method of treating a subject. But even here members can follow out certain definite directions.
Suppose, to make the matter concrete, that some one wishes to write a paper on Ruskin, and does not know exactly how to go to work ”