commencement ’73

Clint built; unnuililatk

Grinnell- History Of An Intellectual Enterprise

(Ed, note: The following is anaoridged version of a speech
traditionally given by Professor Alan Jones to incoming
freshmen during New Student Days each tall. Professor
Jones is a i950 graduate of Grinnell and holds the M.A.
and Ph.D. degrees irom the University oi Michigan.)

by Alan Jones
Professor of History and American Studies

One iall over a hundred years ago a Negro girl applied
for admission to Grinnell College, then called Iowa Cole
lege. The acting principal oi the young institution wrote
a letter to all the trustees and asked them whether the
girl should be admitted Here are some excerpts from the
Trustees’ replies:

G. E. Sargent:

“If I should ever by my vote prohibit anyone of God's
,hilman creatures upon this earth from all the advantages
to be derived from this college on account of their color,
I should pray that my tongue might cease its utterance
and my right arm he paralyzed. Never will I be governed
by policy in deciding the case at issue, with me it is one of
conscience.”

Jacob Butler:

“If with all that God has done and is doing on the sublect
of the African and his ‘i‘iglits’ and ‘wrongs' our college has
not got up to the point of admitting them of either sex
on just the same terms as other people, my opinion is
that we had better let the building tumble down and lay its
foundations anew.”

A tradition offree inquiry that is one of
Crinriell's great powers was present from
the beginning.

The other replies strike the same noterrexcept for one
whose opinion was to let Oberlin do it. These letters iIIUSr
trate the idealism of the founding trustees of this College.

Great Garden West

The college was founded in Davenport, lowa, in the 1840's,
a decade of Utopian hope in the expanding and western- moving
United States. it was, as you know the first college west of
the Mississippi From the beginningdhe college was involved

in the symbolism of the Westernot the wild West, but the .

West as a great garden ot the world, place of hope and dr-
earns, oi quest and opportunity.
In the yea wa became a state 1546 the trustees of Iowa
fiddli'e‘ge we're organized and secured a charter Article 4-»
gorg‘that chaiter is worth quoting it is short and simple:

The object or this institution shalloe to promote the general
interests oi education and to quality young men for the
different professions of lilo.

This is a uniquely broad and open purpose--the basis tor a
tree and independent college The midrlsth century was an
age when religious groups were iounding colleges with ex-
press denominationai concerns in mind but no denomina-
tional ties appeared in the carter ot lowa College and no
denominational restiictions have ever been placed on the
taculty or students oi the college Atradition oi iree inquiry
that is one oi Grinnell’s great powers was present irom the
beginning.
Go Further West
From the beginning the insistence was on an intellectual

enterprise that aimed at academic excellence--h0pefully
equal to the best in the countrynmodeling itseli and its
curriculm on classic Eastern examples. The curriculum
was traditional and demanding: so required Courses, 28 of
curriculum on classic Eastern examples. The curriculum
was traditional and demanding 50 required courses, 29 oi
which were in Latin, and others in Greek and mathematics,
Tuition was a s high as the best in the East ($24.00 in 1850).
In the rough river town of Davenport Such ambitions of
piety and scholarship seemed visionary and Utopian And
when these were combined with antieslavery and anti-
saloon politics by those associated with the college, the

Said one student: “We were never asked
what we would take; it was not election,
it was predestination,"

citizens oi the river city were upset by the institution.
The city government built streets across college prop-
erty, a non—Utopian treasurer ol the college embezzled
the endowment, and in 1858 the Trustees decided that it was
time to go further Westi The move to Grinnell iotlowed
and a merger with Grinnell University, thevisionarycoitege
planned on paper by J.B. Grinnell, tounder oi the town
and promoter of various Utopian and non~Utoplan causes.
in the early years the college catalogue advertised the
peaceiul morality of the place the iollowing way:

Grinnell, the location of lawn College. IS famous [or its
natural beauty and for the morality oiits people it has never

had a saloon, and other evil inﬂuences are proportionately
scarce.

Predestination

George F. Magoun, President irom 1865—35, was a Con-
gregational minister who had been a trustee oi the college
for some years. An old school Calvinist, he brought the
strength of fixed ideas and authoritarian utterance to the
College, along with a rather narrow moralism, One student
summed up the process of registering for courses under
Magoun in terms which give us the tone of his administra—
tion: “We were never asked what we would take; it was not
election, it was predestination.”

Under Magoun, character was developed by prayer meetings
and revivals and a code of student behavior. one of the few
powers possessed by the iaculty was its “care and govern—
ance” of students; they enforced the code with awell—
developed demerlt system. Even then enforcement broke

President GatesEHe gave Grinnell new
vision.,.He introduced the policy of con-
fidencei,.he implanted thespirit of service,

down, and when in 1881 ajuniorstudent was accused of sells
ing liquor to underclassmen, the college newspaper could
admit it and blithely comment: “But the standard of morality
is high here. We are proud to think we can even vie with
Oberlin in that respect.”

But there was really nothing very special or unique about
Grinnell under Magoun. One feels, in fact, that he somehow
failed to live up to broader vision of free inquiry that had
been glimpsed by the founding trustees. This feeling is reins
forced by looking at the circumstances ofllisforced retiree

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

oriutig cuurlexyolliceolCoIIutReialicus

The Campus in 1868

ment as President in 1884 and by the trustees' choice oia
man in complete contrast to Magoun.

George Gates, President irom 1887 to 1900, was alsoa
Congregational ministervbut oi a unique sort- a believer
in evolution he had been denied ordination on his first try.
Gates radicalism endured for his entire lite, always a
crusader he had none or the temperament of aprophet.
He was a frank and lriendiy type in contrast to Magoun,
and the college did become something special under his
leadership, John Main, Gate’s successor as president,
and in a way his disciple, summed up the impact of Gates
on the college this way:

He gave Grinnell a new vision. lie came ata time when
the reign oi law was the dominant principle oi the college,
and he gave it the law of liherty He introduced the policy
of contidence .,he implanted the spirit of service.

Radical Criticism

Both Gates and George Herron, whom Gates brought to the
college as Professor of Applied Christianity, were national
leaders of the Social Gospel movement of the l890‘s~ra
movement that tried to restore some Christian doctrine
of service and brotherhood to the sordid and corrupt business
world of the age With Jesse Macy as one of the nation' 5
first professors of political science, the college hadalready

No college in the nation was the center
of more radical criticism of the status quo
than was Grinnell in the 1890's.

begun to play a pioneer role in relating liberal learning to the

outside political World and to develop a strong tradition
of social studies at Grinnell. Ni) college in the nation was
the center of more radical criticism of the status quo than
was Grinnell in the 1890's,

When Herron's personal behavwr roused new scandal in
tew years later, and when Mrs. Gates developed an allergy
to the Iowa climate, this radical phase of the college’s
history was over, If not forgotten. it remained for President
John Main who was inaugurated in 1905 to truly succeed
Gates and to adjust the college to the realities of the
twentieth century.

A professor of classics at the college before he became
President Main remained, as his successor John Nollen
has said “a follower of Plato and an uncompromising
idealist. He could not deliver an address without refer
ence to eternal and absolute verities. and his clear eyes
‘were unwaveringly fixed upon the Hellenic triad ofthe Good,
the True, and Beautiful.”

Main took the nineteenth century ideals of the college,
tempered the anti-intellectualism of their crusading mili-
tancy and related them to the twentieth century role old
college of liberal arts. His sweeping idealism continued
the tradition of Grinnell as a moral enterprise. The curri-
culum was revised in light of new professional and cultural
needs, new appointments of eminent teachers were made,
foundations were sought after, funds were raised,and build-
ings were built.

The Bird in the Bush

Main died in 1931. Many alumni nostalgically look back
at his administration as aGolden Age otGrinnell history, but
this attitude is false to Main’s own understanding of history,
As he himself said: "Domination by any past can mean
nothing less than failure for the present and the future.”

The college has grown and prospered since 1931. Four
decades of depression, war, and nuclear age have had their
impact, but few who have known Grinnell in recent times
believe that it need bow to the past, or that it has moved
away from its traditional ideals. The college grew strong
under the ten-year administration of President Howard
Bowen between 1955 and 1964 and has grown stronger
under the presence of new student concerns,

I will conclude by noting the career or one student, James
Norman Hall, whose autobiography, My island Home, con-

Said President Main: ”Domination by
any past can mean nothing less than fail-
ure for the present and the future. "

tains a sensitive account of what it was like to be a student

.at Grinnell early in this century.

On a dark spring night in 1910, a tew weeks oeiore his

Commencement. Hall was dreamily gazing at the stars
when two professors strolled to a nearby bench. One of
them was Professor John Stoops, now retired, but who
still graces the campus with his strolls. Hall's account
of the conversation included this:

“Unless lite changes beyond anything we have reason
to expecl,” Stoops said, “liberal arts colleges will never
outlive the need tor them, provided they remain true to
their long-range purpose." the was silent tor a moment,
then adde "And that is to teach young men and women
that the bird in the hush is worth two in the hand."

Hall brooded over this remark for several days and then
understood what vocation he hoped to follow. lie called it
the ”Pursuit of the Bird in the Bush” and he followed it
from Grinnell to a Boston settlement house to the Lafayette
Escadri‘lle, and then west to the islandsofthe South Pacific.

There are few finer examples than Hall of what Grinnell
at its best has meant to its students l'lls Pursuit reflected
the pioneering Western mission of the Visionary founders
of the college, it reflected the doctrine of President Gates
that the secret of tile is “making iorays into new coun-
tries”; it reflected President Main’s quest for the ideal
of the Good, the True, the Beautiful. It is a Utopian tradition
still hopeiul oi green and pleasant valleys.

 

