“All the general student offices for the next three years have been
allotted. Even the freshmen who are to hold office in their senior
year have been picked out,” said one who knew. “How was it done?”
“Oh, politicians from the fraternities put their heads together and
distributed the plums.” “But how about the elections? Can these
politicians deliver the vote?” “Certainly.”
This may be an extreme case, but certainly “delivering the votes”
is common upon our campuses, and partizanship is taken as normal.
Majority-minority relations are made up of deals, combinations, sharp
practices, squabbles, and occasional corruption of the ballot. The
minutes of a certain chapter of a fraternity actually contain the
record of a motion, duly made and carried, that the chapter combine
with other fraternities therein named to get and divide the college
offices.
When we find such things in Pennsylvania colleges, or Ohio colleges,
or Illinois colleges, we are justified in asking whether academic
experience may not be contributing to the gang politics and the
political corruption proved to have been present in these states.
Though the means for proving a connection are lacking, the likelihood
of it is sufficient to give pause to the wise. At least this can be
asserted, that this sort of college experience contains no corrective
for this sort of political conduct.
One looks in vain for anything in the teaching or the administration
of colleges that promises to go far in the opposite direction.
Professors, who might be expected to be wise in such rudimentary
matters of the education of intelligence, are handicapped by lack of
reasonable minority-majority relations within their faculty. College
administration is in too many respects autocratic; a professor has too
much reason to suppose that minorities are unwelcome and futile. The
contacts of students with such mentors, whether in the classroom or
outside it, will not go far towards curing the ills of the campus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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