The Club took a more hopeful view of the case, and it was voted that our
Club should resolve itself into the trustees and faculty of a Post
Graduate School for Academic Donors. Our committee recommended that we
qualify our advanced students by conferring the lower degree of Heedless
Donor (H.D.) every year upon all givers who can be shown to have given at
random. No method of instruction seemed more appropriate than the seminar
plan of practical exercises based on concrete instances. The first
laboratory experiment was performed in the presence of a Seminar of seven
H.D.'s. in a specially called meeting of married professors attired only
in bath gowns borrowed from the crews and base ball teams. Into this
assembly the class of H.D.'s was suddenly introduced. They naturally
inquired into the meaning of the spectacle, and were informed that in no
case did the mere salary of these professors enable them to wear clothes
at all. "But you do usually wear clothes?" inquired a student of a
favorite professor. "How do you get them?" "By University extension
lecturing at ten dollars a lecture" was the quiet answer. Another
professor explained that he got his clothes by tutoring dull students,
another by book reviewing. One somewhat shamefacedly said the clothes came
from his wife's money. One declined to answer, and, as a matter of fact,
his clothes are habitually first worn by a more fortunate elder brother.
On the whole the results of our first seminary exercise were satisfactory.
One student immediately drew a considerable check for the salary fund,
another, who had been planning to give a hockey rink, said he would think
things over. Still a third deposited forty pairs of slightly worn trousers
with the university treasurer, "for whom it might concern." Only one
accepted the demonstration contentedly. He admitted that low pay and extra
work were hard on the Professors, but he also felt that these outside
activities advertised the university and were good business. Of course you
wore out some professors in the process, but you could always get others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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