Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1876 [PAGE 183]

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183

obvious that it will be impossible to you to retain these young men here for the moderate salary paid, and equally impossible that you shall continue to advance all of them year after year to higher rank and higher compensation. Will it not be wise to adopt some settled rules in these cases, fixing the limits of compensation to be allowed? Taking the past year as a guide, the salary of such assistants might be fixed at $40 a month, or $400 a year for the first year; $60 a month, or $600 a year for the second year, and $75 a month, or $750 per a n n u m for the third and any subsequent year; the appointments in all cases being made from year to year. There will arise occasional instances where one of these assistants will be elected to fill a higher vacancy in the Faculty, but these cases will necessarily be rare. 6. Some of our Professors will naturally ask for ah increase of their salaries, as their appointment to full prefessorships seems to carry with it the reasonable expectation of the regular salary paid to others of the same grade. 7. The employment of teachers without salary, who receive fees from those whom they instruct, has already engaged your attention. There have been in the University this year, from teachers of this class: Miss Patchen, teacher of instrumental music; Mr. Marshall, teacher of vocal music ; Miss Bryant, teacher of elocution; and Mrs. Hollister, teacher of voice culture and vocal music. Some such system seems necessary in all branches where the instruction must be to a large extent individual, and cannot, therefore, be made free to all. It might be extended to include painting in oil and water colors, and in such branches of drawing as are sought simply as accomplishments. It is evident, however, that some stricter rules should be adopted in regard to the employment of such teachers. I would advise that they receive regular appointment by the Board, and that their fees be fixed by the Board ; and as you furnish the rooms and fuel and furniture, it seems but just that a per centage of the fees, at least after a certain amount shall be paid into your funds. Such is the usage at other institutions. The importance and excellence of our drawing departments have steadily increased. In industrial education no department is more valuable and none is receiving more attention both in this country and in Europe. The addition of our Art Gallery, and the introduction of cast drawing and designing and clay modeling have given to this side of our work an impulse whose importance can not be over estimated, I suggest that the work in this department be organized into a separate School of Design, and that some appropriation be made to secure additional models especially in the department of Architecture. If the large hall over the Art Gallery could be fitted up with sky lights it would be of great advantage to the classes in cast drawing who need a strong steady light to make the shadows on their models fixed and distinct. If the University is to pursue steadily its course as an institution of industrial learning, and maintain its ground among its eager and richly endowed competitors in other States, it must not neglect this fundamental part of its work. I recommend also the reappointment of Mons. J. Kenis, who is proving himself a thorough instructor, with a salary more commensurate with his merits and his work. I am requested by the Faculty to lay before you the facts in regard to a secret society whose existence in the University has become fully known during this year, and which has been made the occasion of unwonted disturbance and strife. At the outset of our career, and during each successive year, I warned the students faithfully against the introduction of these pests of our American colleges, but several years ago, as it now appears, some young men disregarding my counsels and wishes, yielded to the temptation offered from some other college, and organized secretly a chapter of one of the secret societies known elsewhere. Its existence has been studiously concealed by its members for several years, though suspected by other students. Its more open discovery has produced the natural effect to awaken suspicions as to its aims, jealousy of its movements, and intense dislike of its presence. Its members are very probably free from the motives and acts attributed to them, and think themselves but followers of the innocent, if not praiseworthy example set them by older institutions, but by the necessities of the case and the fixed principles of human nature, their organization is felt as an insult and injury to the general community in whose midst they exist as a separate growth, and they therefore lead naturally and necessarily to perpetual ill-wTill, jealousy and strife. The difficulty of their abolishment lies in their wide diffusion, and in an absurd claim to reverence which their bad antiquity gives them. They owed their origin, or more probably their organic impulse, to those secret societies which the tyrannies of Europe compelled if they did not justify among the artisans and students of an earlier and more barbarous age. Their existence in a country so free and intelligent as ours is an absurd anachronism which ought to shame them out of existence. They exist in numbers in all the older Colleges of the country, generally in spite of the protest of Trustees and Faculties, who almost uniformly disapprove them. Their pretence of secrecy is a silly sham which serves only to tickle the fancy of the members and to attract through their curiosity the fresh comers to college life. The secrets they guard are nothing but a name a n d some awkward grasp of the hand of no consequence to anybody but themselves, and as far as their constitution and purpose are concerned they are simple literary clubs of far less merit than the ordinary college literary societies. If through their concealment from observation they come to have other secrets, they are almost certain to be of a bad kind. It is one of the most serious -charges against them, that their secrecy often leads their members to forbidden dissipations, just as darkness always suggests the bad deeds it promises to hide. Some of these societies have become notorious, if not infamous, for the corrupt influences they exert over their young and inexperienced members. Fortunately there are but few as yet of this class ; but if any are allowed to exist, the bad must be tolerated with the good, since their secrecy forbids to separate them. Their existence in this university seems to me especially undesirable, since we are trying here the new experiment of self-government by the students, a government which seems to demand that all the members of the little community shall stand on common ground, and above all, that there shall be no parties hidden under the veil of secrecy, and constantly by this fact filling the public mind with rumors and suspicions of unfair conspiracy. It is my present judgment that the students' government cannot long be maintained if this secret society continues to exist, and still more certainly if its existence invites as it will, the organization of others. The events of the year have forced this conviction upon the minds of the students themselves, and they have recently sent in a petition to the Faculty, signed by more than 100 names, including the most mature and thoughtful men among them, asking that measures be taken to repress the evil. In addition to this, the students' senate have just passed an act recommending an amendment to the constitution, requiring all officers before taking office to swear or affirm that they are not members of any secret organization or fraternity existing in this University. It is chiefly on account of this action of the students that the Faculty desire this matter to come before you, that you may decide upon the steps to be taken to guard against a growing evil