The Good Ol’ Campus: The Undergraduate

By Grace Levin

This week’s Good Ol’ Campus column reaches back into the college archives to March 1888 with the school publication The Undergraduate. The publication, founded in 1875, consisted of town bulletins, personal announcements, literature and poetry and op-eds.

The paper begins with an introduction to Middlebury:

The College is finely located in the midst of a beautiful park in the village of Middlebury, Vermont. The locality is healthful, and the College offers the advantage of thorough instruction at a moderate cost.

The Undergraduate’s news bulletin shares stories from nearby colleges, such as the fearful baseball game that erupted at Chattanooga. Town events include the spread of measles and a winter blockade, while Sporting and Plunder announce the possible invention of a baseball pitching machine.

College Notes

At Cornell University they teach the Persian Language.

The Trustees of Amherst have recommended that the number of students be limited to three hundred.

A student of Chattanooga University, Tennessee, was killed by the umpire of a bass-ball game, recently, for disputing his decision.

Rev. Byron Sunderland ’38 has President Cleveland as a regular member of his audience.

Town and Campus

There have been several deaths in town from measles.

Several students were detained out of town by the snow blockade.

Junior exhibition occurs March 20, followed by the usual hop.

A pleasant drive whist [a popular card trick game in the 19th century] party was given by Mrs. Farnsworth recently.

Sporting and Plunder

A prominent sporting man has invented a machine which he intends to use as a base ball pitcher.

Several enthusiastic yachtsmen are about to petition the faculty for a course in navigation.

At Lafaette the memorial services on Washington’s birthday were graced with a grand rush between the Freshman and Sophomores. After a struggle lasting nearly an hour, the Freshmen, covered with the mud of victory, retired with patriotic (?) shouts of ‘first in war’ etc.

Editorial 

One of our esteemed exchanges — The Dartmouth — to whose opinions we would pay most humble deference, criticizes our policy of admitting to the literary department of our paper what it is pleased to characterize as ‘A fiery political tirade’….

We would not be understood as approving of political mud-slinging, much less of arguments ad hominem, but we are far from being convinced that a lively — yes, ‘fiery’ — debate on these questions can result in injury to any one, or that it is in any sense out of place in the literary columns of a college paper.

In an impassioned letter to the editor, one student questions student motivation on campus regarding studies in the spirit of the liberal arts.

To the Editor of The Undergraduate:

I cannot help looking forward to the day when the low ambition that studies for ‘marks’ only shall have passed away; when culture, not ‘honors’ when refinement not ‘high standing’ when broad humanity, not prizes, when, in short the desire for a liberal education, not the greed for the petty precedence of the class-room, shall inspire every true student with a thirst for the waters of the true Helicon, whose sources lie in our libraries…Let us then, lay aside all baser motives, and lead our lives consecrate to the holy priesthood of the serene, eternal Goddess of Wisdom. Libramator.