IV. The Presidency—Resolution of 1896
But by 1895–96, a new spirit had begun to be exhibited
by at least some of the Visitors. "When I first went
on the Board in 1894," says Armistead C. Gordon,
afterwards the rector of the University, "it did not take
me six months to realize that, under the system of business
administration then existing, the University was losing
its students to other institutions, North and South;
that it was in an almost moribund condition; and that it
was entirely incapable, however high its scholarship or admirable
its literary methods, of competing, in the midst
of the decay of the old private classical schools, with
other higher institutions of learning, fed by the tremendously
growing public school system,—a system then
totally inadequate to University preparation. I saw too
that, in its domestic management, existing and developing
defects were many, and if they were irremediable,
as they appeared to be under the then system of government,
they would tend to the institution's gradual and
final decay. The Faculty was torn by radical differences
of opinion; there was no liaison between its members
as a body and the Board of Visitors through any responsible
administrative head, because the chairman
was himself a member of the Faculty. The conditions
that prevailed were more or less chaotic."[2]
By June, 1896, these conditions had not improved,
and Mr. Gordon, at a meeting of the Board held on
the 16th of that month, submitted a resolution calling for
the appointment of a committee which was to report upon
the advisability of electing an officer empowered to serve
as the executive of the institution, and in that capacity, to
assume the direct personal charge of all its affairs. It
will be observed that the author of this resolution, in
drafting it, avoided the use of the word "President,"
either because, for the moment, it was desired, in a spirit
of conservatism, to retain the old title, or because the
employment of the designation at that stage might increase
the opposition to the proposed alteration in the
administrative system. Mr. Gordon was appointed
chairman of this committee, and William B. McIlwaine
and Joseph Bryan, of the Board, were associated with
him as members. All three, by their connection with
the University, both as alumni and as Visitors, were
thoroughly in sympathy with all its traditions; but they
were also experienced men of affairs who understood the
value of practical tests.
Mr. Bryan did not think that the hour had yet arrived
for a change. Mr. Gordon and Mr. McIlwaine dissented
from this view. "Competition," they declared in
their majority report, "is no less keen in the educational
world than in that of business; and other conditions being
equal, that University will be most successful in the race
which adds to the best discipline the best instruction, and
to the best instruction and best scholarship, the best business
management. To ensure the latter, it was necessary
that the executive head should be unhampered in the discharge
of his administrative duties by the duties of a
professor." So, in turn, no professor, in their opinion,
should be encumbered with the former duties. They
concluded with the recommendation that a President
should be appointed for a term of four years, at an
annual salary of five thousand dollars; that he should be
required to discharge the main functions now incident to
the chairmanship; that he should be expected to familiarize
himself with those educational methods which had
been adopted in the most advanced seats of learning of
the world; that he should be called on to visit the principal
cities periodically in order to stimulate the interest
of the alumni in the welfare of the University; and that
he should be looked to, to suggest administrative changes
of value for the consideration of the Board, and to assist
the professors in developing their respective schools.
The chairmanship of the Faculty was to be retained,
but the independent executive duties of the incumbent
were to be limited to the right to convene the members
of that body; to sit at the head of the table at their
meetings; and to enforce the numerous regulations which
had been passed to maintain discipline among the
students. He was also to take the place of the President
in the absence of that officer; and was, at all times, to
serve as the medium of communication between him and
the members of the Faculty.
Mr. Bryan, in the minority report, asserted that the
appointment of a President would be repugnant to the
fundamental theory upon which the University had been
organized, and to which it had been loyal for a period
of seventy years; that this theory left no room for the
creation of a one-man power in the government of the
institution: that, in the present era, the office of President
called for both a scholar and a business manager to fill
it, and such a combination of qualities it would, perhaps,
be impossible to find; that the appropriation of a new
salary and the outlay for travelling expenses,—both of
which would be necessary,—would impose an intolerable
charge upon the resources of the treasury; that the
office was certain to become one of the footballs of State
politics; that its allurements would be so irresistible that
many gentlemen of dignified presence, elegant manners,
general culture, and acknowledged eloquence, would desire
to rush into the vacuum without any real intention
of devoting their abilities and energies to practical administration;
that, when once the Presidency had been
occupied by a man of this type, it would require something
more than a crowbar to prize him out, for he was
quite sure to be a man of a pugnacious disposition, who
would resist removal tooth and claw, and thus precipitate
a scandalous row,—which could not fail to tarnish
the dignity of the institution.
Mr. Bryan predicted that the alteration of the existing
system would damage the standing of the professors,
since it would subordinate them completely to a supreme
head, thus destroying that independence of the individual
school which Jefferson had considered to be of the
first importance. Under such a shadow, it would be
difficult to obtain scholars of the highest attainments to
accept a vacancy in the Faculty. A President was not
needed to stimulate the generous spirit of the alumni, as
the history of the University had demonstrated; he was
not needed to strengthen the arm of discipline, for the
majority report itself had expressly left this branch of
the administration under the control of the chairman
as of old; it was not needed for the preservation of the
University's property, for every one admitted that the
proctor had discharged the duty of general oversight
with success. To confirm and further buttress his argument
Mr. Bryan appended a statement of the opinion
which Jefferson had expressed in 1826, when Wirt had
been nominated.
Had the conditions and tendencies observable in the
Southern States in 1896 been the same as those discernible
in 1850 or 1860, or even in 1870, the conclusions so
forcibly expressed in the minority report could not have
been refuted. But the conditions and the tendencies
alike had undergone a radical transformation; and
it was the authors of the majority report, not the author
of the minority report, who had gauged correctly what
the University's welfare really called for. Nor, in submitting
their proposition, had they been disloyal to Jefferson's
spirit, for had he not said, with that prescience
which distinguished so many of his utterances, that each
generation understood its own wants best? and that to
each generation should be left the decision as to what
measures it should adopt for its own good? The office
of President might not be introduced at once, but its
ultimate creation could not be prevented, simply because
the movement in its favor was but one phase of that
universal movement in the Southern States which imperatively
demanded the highest efficiency in every department
of their affairs.
