Mass meeting held to tell the trustees about troubles
The following article appeared in the Feb. 2, 1918, issue of The Rice Thresher . It appears in its original grammatical form.
The students of Rice have laid their grievances before the Board of Trustees and are now awaiting the action of this board. On Monday, February 28, the student body in a mass meeting met a committee from the trustees and for three hours told the trustees how they thought their university was being mismanaged.
The meeting was frank and open, and the students who made talks did not mince words in speaking of how things are being run at the Institute.
The seriousness of the situation may be understood when it is said that this had occasion to investigate affairs at Rice.
Captain J.A. Baker, chairman of the board, presided over the meeting, and there was full accord between the students and the trustees. Several cadets made short speeches, and the coeds presented their case through the agency of Miss Camille Waggaman and Miss Elsbeth Rowe.
The cadets who spoke were Jay Alexander, Alston Duggan, James Markham, Pickens Coleman and Emmet Niland.
After the meeting the trustees expressed surprise that conditions were as the students had pictured them. They also said they regretted that this was the first time they had looked into affairs at the Institute.
The board has a meeting on Wednesday, February 6, and it is expected that the petition, presented to the trustees a day or two after the mass meeting, will be acted on at that time.
Major Duggan Makes First Speech.
Cadet Major Duggan started for the students in a talk where he made a resume of the affairs from the issuance of an anonymous paper "Tape" until the present date.
"We are not insurrectionists," said Major Duggan. "We are students who are working for the bettering of Rice Institute and for the perpetuation of an Institution that has had five years of almost phenomenal success."
Going on, he recited how, after the appearnce of "Tape," there had been some slight disturbances in the dormitories when lights had gone out. "This," he said, "was not an instance of rebellion but a mere outbreak of youthful spirits following the plunging of the dormitories into total darkness." Continuing, he told how the trustees had been called on Friday, that this board met the cadet officers on Saturday and how it was thought best to let the entire student body go before the trustees in a meeting where the matter would be threshed out.
Jay Alexander followed with the big speech of the day, wherein he drew a picture for the trustees of conditions at the Rice Institute before and after the introduction of the military regime.
In part he said: "The cause of the present controversy lies further back than in September. It lies further back than last year. It lies as far back as the beginning of the Institute in 1912, when the spirit was inculcated in the first body of students that has persisted to this day, and that is the cause of all the minor clashes that occurred at any time. This time it is a feeling of fear for the administration, and a belief that nothing is to be gained by an attempt to confer with the authorities concerning students' ills, real or fancied."
Food Conditions Bad.
Alexander is a junior at Rice, and he made the statement that in all his residence at the Institute that he has been called to personally interview Dr. Lovett but once. Afterward he went on to cite instances where the students had made application to the administration for the correcting of certain wrongs. He mentioned particularly the food question, saying that many times in past years had committees visited the administration office to formally protest against the quality of food being served in the dormitories. "At one time," he declared, "a plate of specimens of dormitory food was taken to Mr. McCants, the secretary to the president, and Mr. McCants refused to look at it, saying that he did not `wish to be made sick.'
"If a student has a wrong to be redressed," Alexander said, "he is told to present it to some committee, and he is also told that that committee will not have its next meeting until some time like the fourth pleasant Tuesday of next week.
Delay and equivocation, he said, had inspired every student with mistrust of authorities. He then made reference to an attempt last year to get the "supposed student self-government" of Rice definitely organized into a Student Association. Mr. Lovett absolutely prohibited the using of any part of the buildings or campus of Rice Institute, and, in fact, he seemed to stand in perfect terror of the formation of any such association," he said. In instancing the spirit of suspicion injected into the students by the administration he said that a great many of the cadets firmly believed that dictaphones were stationed in the dormitory rooms in order that the authorities might eavesdrop on the cadets.
Trouble Deeply Rooted.
"The present disturbance," Alexander continued, "is not the first, nor will it be any means be the last, if conditions here remain the same as they have been in past years. I do not wish you gentlemen to consider this a threat, and it is not a threat. It is a statement of actual fact. Regardless of how the present controversy turns out, sooner or later there will be another eruption. Very probably it will not come this year, for we have now said what we wanted to; but in an inevitable cycle things will reach another such point in the course of time, and there will be another outbreak. The reason is deeply rooted, and it will take something drastic to get rid of it, but it must be uprooted if Rice Institute is to continue and to grow as an institution of the highest rank."
J.P. Coleman, president of the senior class and chairman of the Honor Council, next spoke concerning the special delivery letter sent out by the trustees to the parents of every student in the Institute. "Parts of this letter are absolutely false, and other parts are certainly misleading," declared Coleman. "This only goes to show that you trustees have been fooled into believing that such things here are not as they really are."
The Letter Sent to Parents of Students.
The text of the letter follows:
Your attention has been called no doubt to an anonymous communication circulated by a few members of the student body through the Institute buildings and among parents and guardians of the students throughout the State, in which complaint is made of the military rules and regulations in force for the guidance of the students. I am sure you will be surprised to know that no formal complaint of any of these rules or regulations was made to the military committee, the faculty or the trustees in advance of the distribution of the scurrilous document a week ago today. Since that time the faculty have been endeavoring to deal with the student body until yesterday when the trustees of the Institute were called in for counsel and advice, because of the rebellious attitude of many of the students and their apparent determination to enforce their own demands without consultation with anyone and irrespective of the opinions of the faculty and trustees.
The regulations of which they complain were adopted after careful consideration and in the interest, of course, of the students themselves and are such only as are prescribed in other universities where similar regulation of which they chiefly complain is that which forbids visiting in the city or in other rooms after the call to studies at 7 o'clock in the evening, although this regulation does not apply on Saturday nights. The other regulations of which they complain are of minor importance, but the faculty and trustees feel that you will agree with them that whatever complaints the students may have should be presented in a dignified and proper petition to the constituted authorities for relief before taking rebellious action; and, pending the consideration of their petition they should conform strictly to the established rules and regulations of the Institute.
The authorities do not know to what extend, if at all, your son is involved, but lest he may be I am requested by the faculty and trustees to notify you that an appeal will be made on Monday morning to the offending students to cease their rebellious attitude and conform to the rules and regulations of the Institute.
At the same time the present members of the board of trustees, and possibly others interested in the student body, will endeavor to show them the error of their way and urge obedience to rules and regulations. Every student will then be called upon to state to the trustees and the faculty whether he will obey the rules and regulations of the Institute so long as they are in force. Those who refuse thus to pledge themselves will be immediately dismissed from the school with directions to return to their homes.
With these facts before you the faculty and the trustees confidently believe you will indorse the action proposed to be taken by them, and if so we earnestly request that you wire your son immediately urging him to submit cheerfully to all the rules and regulations of the Institute as long as they are in force.
By order of the board of trustees.
J.T. McCants, Secretary.
No Attention Paid to Complaints.
"Formal complaint has been made to the authorities by different individuals," Coleman insisted, "and no attention was paid to the complaints. The school paper once appeared with a statement of some evil conditions here before Christmas, a statement concerning some of the very things which this `scurrilous publication,' as it is called in the letter, severly criticised. What happened then? The student paper was threatened with suspension. Mr. McCants made the statement that if any more articles of such a nature appeared that the paper would be summarily squelched. Denied the right of organized petition by the much discussed rule No. 24, the last resort was an anonymous publication of so caustic a nature that notice must be taken of it. Thus appeared the paper called `Red Tape.'"
Coleman caused some little laughter when he called attention to the sentence, "The regulations of which they complain were adopted after careful consideration, and in the interest, of course, of the students themselves, and are such only as are prescribed in other universities where similar regulations are in force."
"A careful reading of this sentence will reveal the absurdity of it," said Coleman. "It says in effect that two is equal to two, but it really leaves the impression that two is equal to four." Coleman called attention to the word "faculty" used in the letter. "We are not arrayed against the faculty at all," he said. "The faculty as a whole has nothing to do with the military department, and as a matter of fact, I believe that the faculty is behind us almost to a man."
"The student body is willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of our university," began J.P. Markham. "The time has come for the trustees and the students to save Rice Institute. The trustees are going to save our university, and they are going to save it regardless of the feeling of this or any other student body. We have put our case before them and we believe that it will receive just and wise consideration and the wrongs that we ask to be redressed will be redressed." Then the speaker began a statement of the feeling now had for Rice Institute by the students and the feeling they would have under normal conditions, making some statements of conditions such that he said he felt justified in asking be withheld from publication. "This is a family affair," he said, "and it will do outsiders no good to know them."
J.E. Niland, a post graduate student at the Institute, who received a degree last year, next made a talk echoing the sentiments expressed by the other speakers. Following this the coeds presented their grievances to the trustees. Miss Waggaman presented an informal petition begging for more scientific and efficient instruction in physical exercise, and a better looking uniform. She asked for competent instructors in the physical exercise and complained of the attitude toward the coeds displayed by the dean of women, Mrs. Sarah Stratford. Miss Rowe then made a more conservative speech, saying that some of the coeds' wrongs had been righted.
Cadet Major Duggan then took the floor presenting for the students' consideration a couple of resolutions, one of them repudiating the personalities in the anonymous sheet "Red Tape," and delporing the fact of its anonymity; the other a resolution agreeing to stand by the existing regulations as long as they remain in force. Both of these were adopted unanimously by the student body. After this it was moved that a committe be appointed to draw up a formal petition stating the students' requests.
This was carried and the committee was appointed. It is composed of Cadet Major Duggan, Cadet Lieutenants Simons and Coleman, Misses Waggaman and Ellis, and Cadets Alexander, Niland, Green, Taliaferro, Morgan and Markham. This committee is to draw up the petition and to present it to the trustees for consideration. The students promised the trustees that, now that they knew they could present petitions to the board, peitions would not be lacking henceforth.
This item appeared in the Anniversary section of the March 29, 1996 issue.
Copyright © 1996 The Rice Thresher. All Rights
Reserved.
This document may be distributed
electronically, provided that it is distributed in its entirety
and includes this notice. However, it cannot be reprinted
without the express written permission of:
The Rice
Thresher, Rice University, 6100 Main, Houston, TX 77005-1892, USA.
The Thresher Online Project -- ethresh@rice.edu