February 15, 2008
February 15, 1908: A Student Uprising at Texas A&M
(An occasional look at news from academe precisely a century ago, with an assist from the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America project.)
Today’s item comes from Page 5 of the February 15, 1908, edition of the New York Tribune.
DIFFICULTIES IN TEXAS COLLEGE.
Governor Asked to Mediate in Trouble Between President and Student Body.
College Station, Tex., Feb. 14 – Following the action of the board of directors of the Agricultural and Mechanical College, which fully sustained and exonerated President H. H. Harrington yesterday, the institution will probably be left without a student body. Of a normal attendance of more than five hundred, there are only about three hundred students at the school, and many of these are drawing their travel expenses preparatory to departure.
The opposition of the students to President Harrington became so emphatic last week that the board of directors was called together, and has been in almost continuous session ever since. The Governor has been asked to mediate.
A bit cryptic, eh? What had President Harrington done to enrage the students?
We called Texas A&M’s archivist, David L. Chapman, to see if he could shed any light.
“Oh, the 1908 business,” he said. “That went on for a long time, didn’t it?”
According to Chapman, the 1908 turmoil was one of a number of major student uprisings during Texas A&M’s early years – most of which were triggered by the university’s attempts to crack down on student hazing.
The 1908 affair was different, however. This time, the subject was a quarantine. Shortly before the Christmas holidays of 1907, a history professor named Charles W. Hudson was visited by his son’s family from New York. During the visit, Hudson’s infant grandchild came down with whooping cough.
The college physician, Joe Gilbert, imposed a standard whooping-cough quarantine, which forbade any outsiders from visiting the Hudson household. But President Harrington, who had a small child of his own, overruled Gilbert and insisted on a stricter quarantine that confined all of the Hudsons – including another son, who was himself a popular student at Texas A&M – to the house. He also tried to force the New York Hudsons to leave town.
Chapman kindly read aloud to us from Henry C. Dethloff’s Centennial History of Texas A&M University, 1876-1976:
Dr. Gilbert also felt aggrieved because he felt that his authority and professional competence had been, in effect, questioned by President Harrington . . . Gilbert had something of a hero image among cadets and the public because during the Galveston storm of 1900, he had carried a young damsel in distress from the wreckage of the storm and married her immediately afterward.
“Sounds like an opportunist,” Chapman interjected.
In January, the senior class petitioned the governor for Harrington’s removal, but on February 6, the board of directors met and issued a statement that exonerated Harrington of any wrongdoing. Dethloff describes a student assembly held the next day:
The very atmosphere was pervaded by melancholy and silence. Nothing was heard save murmurs, until the band struck up the old tune of “Home Sweet Home.” It was the answer to their dilemma. They would go home. Commandant Andrew Moses got word of what was brewing and called a meeting of the senior class. Moses strongly advised the boys against any hasty or ill-conceived action such as a walkout. Coach L.L. Larson followed Moses and pointed out that any confrontation with the administration would sorely injure the athletic program of the school.
(At this point, Chapman laughed out loud and said, “Nothing has changed.”)
To make the rest of a long story short: Much of the student body left campus, but they eventually trickled back. Harrington finally resigned in August. Life went on.
There isn’t much material on this affair online, but this survey of Texas A&M history, originally published in 1951, gives a brief account, including this quintessentially Texan detail:
One student, crossing the Brazos on his way home, was met at the river by his father with a shotgun, and ordered to return to the campus.
Other news from the same page of the Tribune:
Five hundred students at Columbia University held a mass meeting “for the purpose of arousing more interest in the crews,” as the university’s rowing team was going through hard times.
Alfred Stieglitz was expelled from the New York Camera Club, for reasons that were unclear at press time.
Workers were completing a huge new auditorium in Denver for the 1908 Democratic National Convention. The building’s capacity of 12,500 “far surpasses that of the Mormon Tabernacle, in Salt Lake City, the Cincinnati Music Hall, the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City and the Auditorium or Coliseum in Chicago.”
And finally, a three-paragraph item whose lead sentence is (we hope) sleepier than anything we’ve published at The Chronicle:
“The University of Chicago Press has just published a volume of essays, entitled ‘Chapters in Rural Progress,’ wherein the author, Mr. Kenyon L. Butterfield, president of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, deals briefly with the more significant aspects of the great, never-to-be-exhausted ‘rural problem.’”
David Glenn | Posted on Friday February 15, 2008 | Permalink
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